royfisher

Anticipating an early Spring a few weeks ago. Kiron 105/2.8, Nikon D3.

There's one step missing from that "the negative is the score, the print the performance" analogy: the punch line of the old joke, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

Square enough

It seems you are saying that digital is inferior to film. However, the flattened tones shown on that Q-13 scale are fully 3 stops lighter than the area where JPEG/sRGB data problems begin to occur. My not-very-special monitor will readily display another stop below that from JPEGs, so in my view the rather obvious problem lies somewhere other than the file format. Curiously, I have a cheap old JPEG-only Canon CCD point and shoot with a super-zoom lens that will easily reproduce every step on that scale. I'm not privy to Adams's lens selections, but I am guessing that if wanted to capture all 11 zones, he was not probably not using his worst lenses.

Fading fast. Kiron 105/2.8, Nikon D200.

It should probably be pointed out that the Q-13 grayscale photos posted above have captured only a 5-stop range from a scale that spans a known 6.3 stops. Should one conclude that this is somehow considered good or that digital is a complete failure and disappointment?

The descriptions of the exposure zones are still being conflated with those of the print values, it seems to me. The descriptions are essentially the same up until about Zone VI, but because the brighter tones (exposure values greater than ~7.5) must be compressed to make them fit onto the paper's tonal scale, the descriptions deviate for Zones VII and up. Thus, Zone VII (paper white in the scene) is described as "light gray" in the print, and Zone VIII (semi-specular reflections) as white "with texture and delicate values" in the print. (Compression also applies to the darker tones, but for some reason the dark tones are not being disputed in this thread.) It can be readily seen, in rodeo_joe's correctly exposed example, how Patches 1 and A (Exposure Zones 7 and 7.3) are displayed as light grays compared to PNet's white background. Adams could have chosen to just simply truncate the tonal scale at a zone value of 7.5, like was done with the digital scale, but he designed the model to include semi-specular reflections (VIII), specular reflections (IX), and light sources within the image (X).

End of the season. Kiron 105/2.8 on Nikon D300.

That's what I was thinking the trouble spot was: the interpretation of the words that describe how something looks. The tables and related text I previously referenced make it abundantly clear that matte objects do not fall on Exposure Zone 8 in the Normal exposure case. I think I vaguely remember him commenting on that somewhere, but don't remember what or where. Imagine, though, how confusing a zone progression of II.VIII, IV, V.VI, VIII, XI,...,LXIV would be! At any rate, a fixed geometric relationship could apply only to exposure zones--it would not work with negative or print zones--so some type of abstraction is necessary. The conceptual errors I have seen in this thread are not Adams's.

Are you saying that nothing is brighter than a piece of blank white paper? (I believe, although I am not entirely sure, that the sticking point seems to be the description of Zone 8 as "textured white".)

Nikkor-Q.C 135/2.8 + PK-13 extension tube, Nikon D300.

Previously posted.

Nikkor-Q.C 135/2.8 + PK-13 extension tube, Nikon D3

D200, Nikkor 55-200 AF-S DX VR II kit zoom. Heavy crop, about 65% pixel for pixel.

I think it's trying to tell me something.

The Kiron 70-150 f/4 one-touch zoom has a similar name ring detail, but it's a little different in that the rubber grip is at the very front, adjacent to the name ring. Boggy's site has an on-line PDF of the parts list for that zoom, and the exploded diagram shows that the name ring is secured by four small screws hidden beneath the rubber grip. The 105's grip is much farther away, but based on what you have described, it seems possible that there might be some long tabs that extend all the way from the name ring to the grip. In the Vivitar version of that zoom, the Kiron name ring is solid black, and the ring that says Vivitar is in a more conventional location around the front lens element.

I'm probably stating the obvious, but mine has a set screw near the end of the barrel; it looks like its function might be to secure the branding ring.

This tree was planted in the same year, hundreds of miles away, by an unrelated elderly widow in memory of her husband's passing. Today it is a wee bit taller than I, and it has more leaves on the top. (For a number, take the average of the previous posts and add two pi.)

Magnolia grandiflora and a lot of bugs.

In Artificial Light Photography (Book 5 of the original series) Adams provides several tables that show where Zones V and VIII fall relative to magnesium carbonate, which was his reference for the highest diffuse reflectance (96% reflectance, approx. zone 7.4). From these tables and the surrounding discussion it's pretty obvious that Adams was clear about the relationship of the exposure zones. Hopefully, there should be a similar passage in the three-volume rewrite.