Zone System and Tasteful Lighting

I am in the process of composing a letter to a dear old friend, a LF

landscape photographer, who is totally confused with and bogged down

in extreme Zone System calculations. I�d like to run part of it by

the experts for your thoughts and suggestions:

 

Light of course has quantity, but also quality and character. Every

object and scene has a kind of lighting which will describe its

third dimension and/or flatter it. There is pretty light and there

is ugly light.

 

The Zone System is a wonderful thing. But it seems to ignore light

evaluation and manipulation in favor of heroic exposure and

development methods for dealing with any sort of existing light

condition one may encounter, good or bad.

 

I believe many LF photographers would be better served by learning

to create and/or identify beautiful, tasteful light and then finding

a single exposure and development procedure to capture it. No heroic

darkroom manipulations will render detail in a snowy meadow shot on

an overcast day.

 

If you photograph a scene which is half in direct sun and half in

shade, it will never look right. Even if you compress the tones with

heroic development so it will print, there will not be anything

darker than middle gray in the sunlit area and nothing lighter than

middle gray in the shade.

 

Too many LF photographers have portfolios of technically exquisite

renderings of poorly lighted subjects.

 

We need to re-learn synchro-sunlight fill flash. We need to carry

reflectors and scrims. We need to track the sun�s azimuth and

elevation with a compass. And we need to know when to wait for the

sun to move, or wait for better weather.

You are dead on in your observation.If contrast, light and reflectance ratios are controlled ,normal processing & printing work fine.Also the narrower the scene brightness range,the more real exposure latitude our film has.

Your friend is seemingly engrossed in making reality correspond to his working methods. The converse is to make one's work technique correspond to reality.

It's not either/or. Of course it's very important to find and capture

dramatic and interesting lighting. Subject choice, composition,

focus, perspective, etc. are also important. If someone is

caught in Zone system trivia to the exclusion of the other factors,

some balanced attention to the other factors should improve the

appeal of his

photography tremendously. But that doesn't mean he should ignore

all that he has learned about the technical aspects of exposure and

contrast control, nor should he be discouraged from learning more.

<p>

Your friend sounds like a musician who is practicing scales

all day, obsessed with getting perfect tone quality.

No matter how beautifully rendered, a scale is not a very

interesting piece of music. But it allows the musician to

concentrate on tone, and with luck, the tone quality developed

on scales will one day carry forth to more interesting music.

And no piece of music sounds good if played with poor tone or

intonation.

<p>

Likewise, with luck, your friend's technical expertise on

exposure may be very useful on more interesting and dramatic lighting

and subject choices.

The question asked by John Cook, is a valid and an important one.

I continue to be amaized at some of the views expressed on this forum.

 

During my four years at the Art Center College of Design, (BFA Photography)...the emphasis was always on light, with almost as much emphasis on composition, etc.

 

Our first class at Art Center was a DRAWING CLASS, with students from the art and design departments. There...we sat, trying to sketch a scene of a cube, sphere and cylinder, in stark white, sitting on a white seamless background, and lit by one hard floodlight. This is where we drew and learned about the four key components of light in this scene, and shadow. We learned about the...Highlight, the incident highlight the shadow and the core shadow. Some couldn't draw for s**t but we sure got our basics down about how light works. During the later days when I was shooting all the Rollei cameras, Pentax Cameras, Honeywell Strobes, Nikor, Samsonite etc. stuff for manufacturers brochures, that knowledge of light served me well. Dave Muench went through the same baptism of fire at ACCD and was a friend and classmate.....with all the lighting stuff...and more, as did we all.

 

Some will never learn that the 'primary tool of the photographer' is NOT the CAMERA or technique......it is about knowing 'The quality of light'....and I would add....'Seeing what you're looking at'!

 

Richard Boulware - Denver. BFA ACCD '67.

I'm not sure I understand what "extreme Zone System calculations" might be. Having used this method of exposure for the better part of 35 years, I can't seeing it take more than 1 minute after reading the luminance values of a scene to make a judgment as to what the development (and developer) should be for a photo.

 

I'm also confused as to your statement "...the Zone System seems to ignore light evaluation and manipulation..."

 

That's like saying a light meter ignores light evaluation - which it does. The Zone System is only a tool to be used in conjunction with your light meter to render a scene the way YOU visualize it.

 

If you can't evaluate a subject, and come up with a personal interpretation / rendering of it, the Zone System won't magically do that for you. The Zone System is merely a method of helping insure that YOUR visualization of a subject is translated into an exposure that will 1.) fit on the film, and 2. can be translated to fit onto a piece of photo paper (if that's your final end goal).

 

"If you photograph a scene which is half in direct sun and half in shade, it will never look right. Even if you compress the tones with heroic development so it will print, there will not be anything darker than middle gray in the sunlit area and nothing lighter than middle gray in the shade."

 

Really? I probably have at least 50 photos that would prove this supposition wrong - as I'm sure many other do too.

 

What "we" need to do is learn how to evaluate a subject and imagine the best rendering of the subject.

 

If what you mean is that people often put ZS calculations and technical perfection above truly seeing a subject - I couldn't agree more. But don't blame that on the Zone System - only a lack of personal vision.

Zone system is good to learn and forget about it. By referring to �extreme Zone System calculations" John apparently refers to the abuse of incredible jargon used in this forum to describe simple acts which can under normal circumstances be described by common adjectives like �darker�, �lighter� , or �shorter� and �longer� exposure. But it would sound too trivial for many aspiring photographers. I certainly do not need to dwell into the ZS vocabulary while looking at your �Desert Rock�, Steve, or for taking good pictures in even more difficult back light situations.

John:

 

I also am mystified by some peoples obsession with the zone system, film curves, paper curves, etc. Check out some of the posts on the 'b&w - film' board. My goodness! Most of these folks are thinking too much (I think). Will worrying about 1/3 stop zone placement and calibrating your system from N-3 to N+7 (no kidding! I saw the post a few weeks ago!) make your pictures better? Possibly...but I think the time and effort is better spent being out there looking and shooting.

 

I agree that recognizing beautiful light is critical. I still struggle with that. To me, the zone system is a very simple way for me to get a good negative. I use a variation of the Fred Picker method a)place the high value on VIII. b)check the low values. ok? take the picture and mark the holder "N". Not ok? c)place the low value where I want, take the picture and mark the holder accordingly. I don't worry much about the middle values. Of course my Z6 meter with the zone dial makes all this about as complicated as making a batch of pancakes...

 

On the other hand, many fine workers, I can think of Minor White, use/used very elaborate zone systems. To each thier own is the moral of the story.

 

I don't like using flash. My reflector is my focusing cloth. What the heck is a scrim? Tracking the sun's azimuth and elevation...wow that's pretty heavy stuff (for photography I mean...in real life I'm a surveyor).

 

Recognizing the light, revealing the essence of the scene...do what needs to be done to accomplish this.

Thank-you all for your kind and helpful replies. I must restate that I don't advocate abandoning the Zone System, as it is absolutely necessary. But some authors go beyond the basic Zone System, advocating the study of paper curves and enough charts and graphs to get a rocket to the moon, while ignoring the subject's lighting quality.

 

A scrim (or more properly a butterfly or kite) is a large frame supporting a piece of white taffeta parachute material used by cinematographers between the subject and the sun to soften the light like a soft-box. You can use one to cast a big soft shadow on a kid at the beach or a still-life pile of seashells. See http://www.matthewsgrip.com for a whole bunch of this movie stuff. You can make your own very cheaply out of pvc pipe or wood.

 

One more item. There is a magnificent granite cathedral near here which faces almost perfectly north. Sun shines directly on the facade for only a few hours, one or two days per year. The rest of the time it looks (on B&W film) like gray mush. I checked the building's exact position on a topo map and then found when it's facade would be tastefully lighted by checking the Naval Observatory site http://mach.usno.navy.mil/.

 

Having been trained in Hollywood, I also cut my teeth on a Spectra Combi 500 incident light meter. I recommend all of the above to you, my friends.

 

Thanks again