Dear Greg,
I use the Zone system more often than not, and I do use the BTZ process too, but I tend to use the Zone System more, since I am just a long time user of this method, and I am comfortable with my exposure results. Periodically though, I do underestimate my exposures while capturing an image this late in the evening...
I like the soft evening light, and because of that soft light love affair my exposures can creep past five minutes or so very quickly, since the diffused light from the Northern Alberta sky allows me to work close to 10:00pm, during the peak summer months. Matter of fact, when I am cruising and hiking in Jasper National Park during the midsummer, the Northern Light sky allows me to work until 1:00 am in the morning. I don't usually stay out in the bush that late at night, since I tend to have too many bear encounters.
The greatest benefit that late evening exposures offer me happens to be the wondrous dead calm after the sun sets beyond the horizon...
For the moment, I know my film's development times very well, my film's reciprocity issues, and my light meter's quasi-normal some day I will toss this damn thing off the cliff characteristics, within a very dimly lighted scene. I tend to expose the shadows for Zone IV to capture the detail, control my skewed highlights through the established development process, and selectively print down the Zone IV areas to bring Zone III into a proper black. I would rather have sufficient detail in Zone III by printing down a Zone IV, than not. I let the unimportant lower Zone black areas drift off into never, never land, where the Black Bears usually sit, and wait for me to pass by.
Highlights that run away on you during the printing process can be controlled effectively with a well mannered old school darkroom flashing technique.
I must thank you for your comments; incidentally, too...
jim k
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