Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/12/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Eric Welch wrote: > > sometime around 12/13/99 11:59 AM, Martin Howard at howard.390@osu.edu was > heard to write: > > > Yeah, but the zone scale is based upon perception, right? Zone VI is > > supposed to be twice as light as Zone V, and Zone IV is half as bright > > as Zone V. > > > > I don't get the point of thinking in zones, if the zones aren't always the > > same. > > Nope. Photography doesn't work that way. And it's not based on perception, > that's about the least realiable way to do sensitometry. That's why they > make densitometers. :-) > > The point is that Zone VI reflects about twice the light as Zone V according > to your meter, but the tone on the print won't refect twice the light. > That's why the charts have curves, not straight lines. This is basic Zone > system stuff. Have you ever read Ansel Adams' books? Forget about the rest > of the pretenders out there. > > Phil Davis' "Beyond the Zone System" tries to calibrate the paper so that > you can hold up some gray scale against a subject and decide what tone > somethig should have. For me that's way too anal retentive, and I bet Ansel > would say the same thing. The Zone system is a calibration of your process > and equipment. > -- Here's how I see it: Say you are in a dark kitchen. The lights are down low. (Someone is getting a haircut) The wood table you decide you are going to place at zone five as it is a middle grey table if you ever saw one so you take a reading of it and you are going to go with it. But that person is sitting at this table in this dark kitchen and you take a reading off their face. You want it to be at Zone six. Normally one stop over middle grey or zone five or an overall average reading of a generalized scene: incident reading. But it is only a half stop brighter than the table because the light levels are so low. So you have to increase development of your neg to place that face where it belongs on you scale (Zone) plan or you just say screw it I'll print it on number 4 (instead of your normal 3). So where does that leave us in this issue? I think zones are frames of mind, what you make them, not logarithmic or numberical There are numbers involved. But they come later it think. Mark Rabiner