Im watching a few folks on youtube to figure out the zone system, as its very hard to find anything on it in writing that doesnt have 30 pages of unneccessary data on film chemistry.

ive been trying to use way beyond monochrome as a guide but the section on the zone system is lacking something.. this the only ONLY part i can find that says how to correct the zone 3 area to BE a zone 3 density in final negative

But knowing that, in the subject, Zone V
is exactly two stops brighter than Zone III, a compensating exposure reduction of two stops is applied
to render the textured shadows as visualized.


then the book goes right into changing the time of film development to create a desired contrast. And this has me really confused as the book is not apparently written for a beginner.

I have been following a few dudes on youtube and one of them did a small break down on using the zone system and it doesnt make any sense.

on the youtube guy, he shows the zone system as being "find the area with shadow that you want to have detail in, take a meter reading on that, and then decide what shadow zone you want it to be. Because the camera is set as "middle grey, zone 5" if you want that spot to be a zone 4, you increase the shutter speed.

In his demonstration videos, he takes a meter reading on a shadow, the meter reads as say f/8 @ 1/15 he increases the shutter speed to 1/60. and then REDUCE development of the exposed film by 15% for each shutter speed movement.

The images he shows in negative scans and finalized prints are nice. but is this the REAL way its done?