Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/12/27
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Ted Grant wrote:
>
> Guys,
>
> you know all this zone stuff is great if you're shooting one sheet of film
> or one roll of film all in the identical light and shadow effects.
>
> It's never been my thing to be involved with it, as I see it as quite
> impossible when I'm using 5 or 6 cameras all at the same time shooting
> various compositions and bits and pieces of a situation.
>
> Like, what happens to KISS in this kind of scene? Keep it simple doesn't
> apply here one iota!
Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights becomes:
(ultra simple zone system): Expose for the shadows, print for the
highlights.
Distilled down to its simplest form, this reflects the property of
modern silver halide negative film that if you expose long enough to get
desired shadow information on the film, the rest will work out, on the other
hand if the information ain't there you are SOL.
For available light photography this becomes important especially if you
are pushing TMAX or Delta '3200' film to ISO 3200 or even higher: How much
shadow detail do you want? What will you accept?
On the other hand if you need the shot quickly just line up the arrows
and shoot. Actually this points out an ergonomic problem I have with the M6.
The arrows indicate to which side the exposure falls but not how much. If
there were 2 arrows to indicate 2 stops of over/under exposure, or 3 or 4
one could quickly center on a shadow, roll the dial to -3 and shoot. Heck,
most people can count 3 arrows as fast as they can count 1.
Jonathan Borden