Zone System in Color?

Is there a color equivalent to the zone system? Do today's photographers

pre-visualize scenes and decide where to place each part of the scene on the

lightness scale? Who would be a good example?

You need to understand metering to apply the zone system. And that is useful for any medium you shoot.

It's called metering.

 

The zone system depends on development control of individual images to achieve the desired tonal range. You can't do it with color because you can't control dynamic range and contrast by varying development without screwing up the colors, and you can't do it with roll film (unless you shoot the whole roll on one subject).

 

Some people will say you can use it for color, but they aren't describing the Zone system. They're describing optimal metering.

 

I suppose someone, somewhere has probably created a "digital zone system" for color, but again, it won't be the Zone system

Digital postprocessing with tools like Photoshop allow you to manipulate areas of a picture separately in ways reminiscent of the work you might do to an image on an enlarger bed. These products also allow users to create photos that are seamless amalgamations of a series of color photo originals. This capability gives the digital photographer the ability to create his own version of a color zone system by metering and taking separate shots of the same scene each exposed to get some detail right. I used this technique for a very contrasty beach scene that had a large shaded foreground area and a prominent brightly lit background.

 

I don't study photographic trade literature enough to know if someone is actually writing about experiments in this area intended to formalize a systematic approach to a digital color zone method.

http://www.mega-vision.com/tech/tips/digizone.htm

Actually you can use the Zone system for color. Minor White described this in "The Zone System Manual." Since the ZS requires you to first analyze the scene for luminance values, you can apply that to any film.

 

The analysis will tell you the contrast range of the scene. You then choose the key subject in the scene and see where the value falls between the shadow area where you want details and the highlight area where you want details.

 

This will tell you how the key subject will be rendered (where it falls on the ZS scale). You then have to decide whether you want the key subject rendered lighter or darker, understanding that changing the exposure will affect both the shadows and highlights.

 

While you cannot readily use the final ZS development controls available with B&W materials, you can certainly use the scene evaluation and visualization portions of the ZS process for color.

There are some charts showing colors and what zones they fall into at this web site:

 

http://www.normankoren.com/zonesystem.html

 

Hope this is what you are looking for Ron.

"This will tell you how the key subject will be rendered (where it falls on the ZS scale). You then have to decide whether you want the key subject rendered lighter or darker, understanding that changing the exposure will affect both the shadows and highlights"

 

As I said, the color "zone system" is simply metering.