zone system without a spot meter?

<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>Basically i am unable to afford a spot meter but i have a sekonik flash mate that i use to take ambient and reflective light meter readings. I am hoping to improve my technique when using the zone system but am having a bit of trouble working it out.</p>

<p>Now i have a theory. Is it possible to meter the shadows, either by creating an equivalent shadow myself, or doing a reflective reading of a shadow area and placing that on zone III. And then using an a 'white card' to meter the reflectance to be developed to zone IX.</p>

<p>I need to determine my processing times but is this theory sound?</p>

<p>Thanks, Joe</p>

<p>Sure....there are lots of ways to do it without a spot meter. What you really need to know is a thorough understanding of how the zone system works as a theory, and then take a meter reading and apply the theory. I've been doing it for over 50 years without a spot meter...you can just as easily apply the zone scale concept against incident meter readings.</p>

<p>What I did was get physically close to the zone in question with my meter (in this case, fill my camera lens with that zone entirely and get its meter reading). I wrote that down. I kept using my feet to meter the other zones in the scene. Then I was able to successfully determine what metering each of my zones were. Your white card/shadow idea will be fine IF you can be certain your meter will actually meter just those things. I don't know enough about your meter to say whether it will do that. </p>

<p>My "walk to it and fill the scene" method assumes that you can physically reach all your zones in the time it would take for the lighting to change by more than 1/3 of a stop across the scene. That's a rather limited effectiveness. For me, it only works maybe half of the time, optimistically. Hence my happiness when I had finally saved enough for a used Pentax spotmeter. </p>

<p>Use a digicam with a live histogram. It's like taking a few thousand concurrent spot meter readings (zoom the lens to cover the same field of view as the target film camera.)</p>

<p>You'll have to calibrate the digicam before first use. Take a wide dynamics test scene and walk up with your reflective meter to measure the exposure from the darkest section of the scene to the brightest. Jot down where each stop corresponds to on the digicam graph. The histogram will be linear and accurate, but probably will cover maybe around 6 zones.</p>

<p>You need a real spotmeter to properly assess a scene a la zone system. The only way to do it with a non-spot meter would be to physically walk up to the shadows and highlights and everything in between so you can meter right up to the object. You're probably not going to do that for most kinds of scenes that might benefit from using the zone system in the first place.</p>

<p>The only alternative is as you already suggested yourself: meter on something similar. But just metering on a shadow is not the zone system. It's just metering.</p>

<p>Now, a true spotmeter, especially a digital one, isn't dramatically different than a zooming digital camera, when you stop to think about it. So, you could make use of that. The only fly in the ointment with the digicam idea is that many of them have an incomplete range of apertures. and even if they do, it tops out at f/8 or so due to the limitations imposed by having a small sensor and thus very short focal lengths. That would make it <em>inconvenient </em>to use as spotmeter.</p>

<p>I've been thinking about the histogram idea posted above, but I don't see how that can be applied to using the zone system. Unless I'm not getting something, there's no way to relate a histogram obtained by aiming a digicam to anything about having to do with the zone system where you have to meter the different parts of the scene and then decide where you want to "place" them. On the other hand, I imagine that, assuming a digital camera is accurate, just metering the same scene with the matrix meter would get you pretty close to the exposure setting you would end up with by evaluating the scene yourself in many cases (minus any film development aspects of the zone system). After all, the only difference between that and spotmetering for the zone system is that the matrix meter doesn't know about specific objects in the scene. It can only evaluate its fixed segments. But still, it's got to end up pretty close, and then you could use the histogram to see if that that exposure setting clips anything and adjust accordingly.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The only fly in the ointment with the digicam idea is that many of them have an incomplete range of apertures. and even if they do, it tops out at f/8 ...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's right, and at high zooms the widest aperture tops out at f5.6, if you're lucky. Proxying a digicam as a spotmeter can be a hassle. For a scene with wide dynamics, it means fiddling with shutter, aperture, and ISO settings then doing the math in your head to get at the equivalent differential EV readings.</p>

<p>Now, for the handy (and those with more time than photography budget) go take a look at <a href="http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK">CHDK</a>. This is an open source firmware add-on for Canon digicams. It gives fully scriptable control over the camera. Spotmeter conversion is just a script away.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>... relate a histogram obtained by aiming a digicam to anything about having to do with the zone system ...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Strictly no. However, it's a good match for the workflow I describe below:</p>

<p>I use 6x7 cameras of a couple types, shoot on TMY and Acros, develop in Xtol, then scan on a Nikon 9000. I've tested enough to know how each film type records (and digitizes) based on the specific development regime in Xtol.</p>

<p>When metering critically, I use an old Canon A720 digicam enhanced with CHDK. The singular goal is to capture the full dynamics of the scene on film. If it's recorded it can be digitized; if it's digitized, then it can be adjusted to print appropriately.</p>

<p>On a low dynamics scene, for example, the digicam histogram indicates both the proper exposure setting, and how much to reduce exposure and push development. Ideally, the density excursion on the whole frame of developed negative should be above transparent film base to below completely opaque. </p>

<p>Note that this approach is faster but sloppier than the traditional spot meter workflow, where density excursion is controlled specifically on interesting parts of the frame. Exposing and developing for the print, however, is the final goal in both.</p>

<p>Joe,<br>

Check out Carson Graves book, The Zone System for 35mm Photographers. I think this has the exact information that you are looking for.</p>

<p>I sincerely doubt your theory would really work. If you used it as an incident meter, it would only meter the light falling in a particular area, and not give you a true indication of the reflective qualities of the part of the scene. For example, sure, you could get a Zone III reading, but maybe you're shooting a dark rock. Will the lichen have detail? You wouldn't really know that without a very reflective reading of a very specific portion of the rock. Maybe the meter tells you the shadow is Zone III, but in reality, the amount of reflectance is only Zone II, and you lose the detail of the lichen.</p>

<p>The Zone system isn't just about measuring light, it is about "seeing" or "previsualizing" the image. Will the rocks give you the sense of light that you want? Is there too much difference in exposure between the light streaming across the top of the rock, and the shadow of the rock? Once you know this information, then you can make some assumptions about what you need to do in the processing of the film, in order to expand or contract the tonal range of the image.</p>

<p>IF you can't afford a spot meter, or don't want to go into all the minutia and trouble of doing the zone system, then perhaps you might want to look into stand development or double bath development.</p>

<p>It is worth noting that Ansel Adams originally developed the Zone System, in the early 1940s, for use with a Weston Master meter, a selenium meter with an acceptance angle of about 30 degrees. In fact, there is a strong historical connection between the Zone System and the design of this meter. At the time, the only spot meter available was an SEI photometer that was extremely expensive and bulky. It wasn't until the 1960s that spotmeters became at all common, with the introduction of the Pentax models. Even then, the Weston Masters were the standard among Zonies for quite a while. <br>

What Adams recommended (and did himself) was a combination of making substitute readings and walking up to his subjects. (Or making educated guesses when he couldn't find the meter; see Moonrise over Hernandez.) He also described making cardboard tubes that narrowed the acceptance angle of the Weston meter. This is described in the second volume of the original Basic Photo Series, first published in the 1940s. Those books are fun to look at, but not as easy to understand as the completely revised books published in the 70s.<br>

My point is just that using the Zone System is not tied to having a spot meter. But, a spot meter certainly helps. If you have an iPhone, you might be interested in one of the spot meter apps that have recently appeared.<br>

Hope this helps.<br>

David</p>

<p>There are examples in "The Negative" of Ansel Adams using incident meters and gray cards. Tonal shifts can be done without any specialized equipment; but, Adams excelled at his controls of the image because he tracked a small database's worth of information with the images he processed. It wasn't just the metering, but controls on exposure throughout the entire process that helped to make his images successful. I think in one of the 1950s versions of "The Print" I read that he had his own shorthand notations for how to burn or dodge a print; he would map out the surface area of the image and make notes on that so that he could recreate the process later. So, it's not going to be just in the equipment, but in the discipline (or collective knowledge) of applying the whole process to one image. Start making and processing more than one image at a time, and following the decisions the photographer has already made can become a task to remember. Either you're up on your game, or you are going to have to make lots of notes. Spot meter's not required, but paying attention is.</p>