The Zone System

[dan_k6]

I am a beginner and I want to understand a little bit about The Zone System.

 

What book do you recommend?

 

I understand Ansel Adams "The Negative" is not really for true beginners.

 

I want a book that I can easily follow and understand. I saw this book on Amazon

called "The practical zone system by Chris Johnson. I just want to hear what

your recommendations are.

 

To give you an example of how much of a novice I am...I don't even know what The

Zone System is.

 

 

Thanks

[mjt]

not a book, but it's a start and will lead you on to others ...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_system

 

for "newcomers" as the article hints at:

 

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/zone_system.shtml

[rick_gerbehy1]

If you can find "How to be Positive about the Negative" by R W Behan printed by Preston Publications,(1974) it would be a great place to start. It has some down to earth and simple instructions on cameras, metering and black & white processing and printing. He simplifies his version of the zone system. I taught a novice group of high school students how to develop and print Tri-x using his modified zone system. It worked out OK although I was a bit skeptical at first. I think the pamphlet is out of print, but if you search on line you may be able to find one. It sold for $7.95 in the 1984 second edition printing.

[eddes]

Hi Daniel

 

I see by your profile that you are using digital. The zone system is used to understand how luminance "zones" in the scene you see in front of you translate to print "values" by systematic control of exposure, negative development and printing. Understanding how the range of light levels and are mapped into a final print and how to control that mapping, to get the result you want, is universal.

 

But the mechanics describe in the zone system books are for B&W negative film. One of the basic premises in the zone system is to expose for shadows and develop for the highlights. This works for film.

 

You need to be careful because in digital, the world is upside down (actually more like positive film like slides). You need to expose for the highlights and post process for the shadows. Also, you have access to all sorts of new capabilities like exposure bracketing and combining images in post processing to work with. There are also elements you should master to get the best results like using raw files and sharpening that are totally alien to the film word.

 

I suggest you learn about zone and values and then go elsewhere to learn about how to process in digital. The luminous landscape is a great place to start.

 

Good Luck

 

Edmond

[Peter_in_PA]

Ansel Adams - The Negative. Just buy it. It may be a bit "over your head" at first, but it is

remarkable.

[dan_k6]

Thank you for all the info and the links.

[lex_jenkins]

As a longtime (30+ years) b&w photographer, I'll be the first to risk blasphemy: Don't bother.

 

There's virtually nothing in the Zone System that will help you as a photographer, especially shooting digital, but even shooting 35mm.

 

For the Zone System to be of any use it's necessary to control every aspect of the process, from film exposure through printing.

 

Despite assertions to the contrary from fellow photographers whose opinions I respect, I remain unconvinced that the Zone System is of any use whatsoever to digital photography or color film photography.

 

That's not to say that sensitometry is unimportant. It's one of the *most* important aspects to photography. But sensitometry is only one part of the Zone System. The rest is barely relevant to most 35mm film photographers and completely irrelevant to digital.

 

If you plan to shoot digital, you're better off studying the concepts that have evolved from the Zone System that apply specifically to digital photography: exposure; understanding histograms; how ISO choices influence noise and dynamic range (there is nothing whatsoever in the Zone System that will help with the digital ISO issue); post processing.

 

Personally, I believe it's time to stop trying to apply concepts from film photography and the wet darkroom to digital photography and editing, where the squeezed fit simply doesn't work and often confuses matters. Unsharp masking is a good example. Other than the term, there's little relationship between the original technique applied in the wet darkroom, and digital editing.

 

Just my nickel. Feel free to disagree. Won't change my opinion, tho'.

[astral]

I totally utterly and completely agree with Lex. Unless you cut up a roll of film so that you can optimally develop each image individually, etc, the Zone System is not any practical use any more. Once you move to digital it theoretically still applies, but not in any practical ways.

 

However, within the Zone System hypothesis lies the fundamentals of exposure measurement and calculation, an understanding of contrast (and tone) and of the character of the film and chemistry, etc ... and these (and the 'analogous' digital processes) are well worth the time and effort to research. However, as far as the full-blown Zone System goes, while 'interesting' it is obsolete and has been since 'we' stopped using sheet film. As for digital - it is utterly irrelevant although I do believe someone (somewhere) has 'translated' it into the digital context.

 

Now that's going to annoy a lot of Zonies, for which I offer no apologies whatsoever. AC

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

I use the zone system, but I shoot large format B&W film. I do find it very useful. As for

digital (which I also shoot), the zone system has been indirectly useful simply because I think

about the overall contrast and tones of the scene before me. YMMV.

[walterh]

I agree with Lex in the way that transposing the zone system to digital imaging is not doing any good. If you restrict yourself to digital imaging you are better off reading about digital capture and post processing.

 

Ansel Adams book "the negative" (there are many reasons to read this anyway ^^) including aspects of the zone system is replaced by "Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3" by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe. (Let us see what this stirs up :-P )

 

If you have a correct exposure and the histogram proves that the entire dynamic range fits into the RAW file you can do everything the zone system can do in post processing without even knowing the zone system exists.

[errol young]

With digital histograms and photoshop, I also do not use the zone system to photography like I did when using film but it is an important part of the way that I understand photography.

 

It makes me understand that there is a limited range of ev's in any shot and that I can manipulate them up or down.

 

I could shoot without it but I find the old knowledge helps.

 

Errol

[photo5]

I think the zone system is still important to understand in the digital world, although we now have 256 zones rather than just 10. Still, even a digital camera will meter any tone into an 18 percent grey, so it is helpful to know when you use the spot meter function on your camera on a specific area, you can then know to overexpose or underexpose by any number of stops to place that specific area into the zone you want.

 

When I had my Nikon D80, I had to use the zone system every day to get the camera to do what I wanted it to do. It would see a light scene surrounded by a dark one, or the other way around, and react by exposing the dark background up to zone V, rendering the light scene way too bright, so I would dial in a -1EV adjustment on my meter to compensate to render the dark scene dark as it should be. Or if a dark object were surrounded by a light area, the camera would overexpose the light area to make the dark object a middle grey, so again I would have to dial in a -1 or sometimes -2EV to compensate for it.

 

Fortunately with my new D300, the meter is smart enough to know the dark areas in a scene should be dark in the first place.<div></div>