zone system - a primer

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ujjwaldey8165

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I have been meaning to ask this question for a few days now. Someone with the knowledge of both theory and practice might be able to clarify.( Rob?:D)

I am thinking of the Adam's zone system.

So, lets say a particular view of a shot has all the 9 zones - absolute white to absolute black.

I measure the scene for an object which is zone 5 ( say f8/500). Also, say my film can record only 5 zones. So zones 3,4,5,6,7 will be recorded distinctly. Objects in zone 1 and 2 will be white, and zone 8,9 will be black.

Now I set the camera to f16/500. So object in zone 4 will record the mid-tone. The range that will be recorded is zone 2,3,4,5,6. Objects in zone 1 will be white; and objects in zone 7,8,9 will be black.

Have I got it right? How many zones can a normal b/w film ( say 100 ISO) without any push/pull record
 
:thinking::thinking:

First thing I see and read on the forum and it gives me a headache :LOL:

ISO 100 film should be able to take a minimum of 7 stop lattitude, however reading around various things it would seem that the best way to do the Zone System is to underexpose by a 1/3 to 1/2 a stop and change you dev time to allow for it.

Me I always expose 400ISO @ 200ISO and following the Dev Times for ID-11 (think it is knock 2 minutes off the time for 400) I then get a neg which has lots of tones across it and works ok when scanning (yes I know heathen but I don't have room for a darkroom, yet)
 
The zone system works the other way, Zone 0 is pure black and Zone X is pure white. Out of these zones you need to take into consideration what is the usable dynamic range of the film you're using, lets just say 7 stops for negative film and 4 stops for transparency. When you take a meter reading, the meter presumes that you wish to make whatever you take the meter reading from Zone V. If you meter shadows, your meter will place the shadows on Zone V which will make them 2 or even 3 stops too bright, meter from your highlights and you will have the same in reverse.

Negatives are a great deal kinder to highlights, they will not "blow" in the way that you would find in digital. For this reason it's actually pretty sound advice to meter for the shadows. To do this, you'd take a meter reading from the area of shadow and then "underexpose" by 3 or 4 stops. This would place your shadow in either Zone II or Zone I (which should be roughly where you want it). For practical purposes if you metered the area of shadow at 1/60th f/8 (Zone V) you'd want to shoot at 1/500th f/8 (Zone II) or 1/1000th f/8 (Zone I). For negative film you could probably get away with just making an exposure of a scene "normally" then making another exposure that's a stop overexposed or even more if you're feeling adventurous.

For slide film what you're probably going to want to do is make sure you preserve the highlights, like in digital once they are gone there's no getting them back. Instead of metering from an area of shadow you could meter from the highlights in a scene, in most cases the clouds are probably your best bet. If you meter from the bright clouds and get a reading of 1/500th f/8 (Zone V) you're going to want to "overexpose" at 1/60th f/8 (Zone VIII). Zone VIII will give you nice white clouds that still have some texture. Due to the more limited dynamic range doing this has quite possibly caused you to lose some shadow detail depending on how contrasty the scene you're shooting is.

This is a pretty limited (but hopefully not too far off the mark!) explanation of the zones system. For more control over scene contrast you could either alter the development of your film (rather expensive to do now) or if you can use graduated neutral density filters (my personal preference) to balance the exposure in contrasty scenes.
 
Lets not forget that the dynamic range of film is only as good as the output media, you're choice of paper could have a dynamic range greater than or less than the film. If it is less than the film then you're just going to compress the tonal range as if you'd shot it straight (instead of adding exposure for the shadows and shortening the development for the highlights. If you're scanning on a flatbed scanner then you're dynamic range is probably less than a consumer DSLR unless you've got a high end one or you're going to do a multiscan HDR job with it.
 
There is an interesting article about Zone system here which basically indicates a slightly different way of using it. The spotmeter places everything in Zone IV, so place your key detailed area in correct zone just spot meter and apply exposure compensation to shift it to appropriate zone. You only have 3 zones with the details that can be fully appreciated and 5 zones with details distinguishable so not too many to choose from.

Reading zone system and using it like this makes it really easy (at least from practical perspective) as you don't have to think what fits where and how to find your middle gray.
 
Thanks guys. I think I have got it.

To simply summarise ( so as not to hurt Knikki's head any more tomorrow morning :D)

For negative films, spot meter on the shadow where details are to be preserved and under expose by 2 stops

For slides, spot meter the highlights where details are to be preserved and over expose by 2 stops.

Off course, most of my cameras dont have spot metering, so I guess I could over expose by 1 stop to preserve the shadows for most average shots.
 
Not strictly zone metering stuff but I recommend Les Maclean's book titled Creative Black & White Photography. It has an excellent section on metering to retain shadow detail and compensating the development with some excellent photos showing how the dynamic range of a film is changed by giving more exposure to the shadows and pulling the development to protect the highlights. Won't help with slide though I'm afraid. I picked a copy up in one of those clearance books stores for £2.
 
You are right in your understanding. However, the zone system is really a whole concept that allows you to easily translate your visualisation of the photograph into the finished print with the minimum amount of manipulation at the print stage, rather than way of exposing.

It's not much use unless you are shooting sheet film as unless you shoot a whole roll of film with shots containing a similar dynamic range, the whole idea of using extended or reduced development to expand or contract the subject contrast range is moot.

Ideally, you need to find your EI for the film you use, then work out your normal dev time for your usual developer, then go on to work out the N-1, N-2, N+1 and N+2 dev times so you can contract and expand the contrast on the neg as required.

Work out the dmax and dmin for the paper you use, so you know how many 'stops' it will print. You can then use the zone system to match your exposure to your visualisation of the scene and use your expansion or contraction dev times to fit it into the DR of the paper you print to.

Basically, about a month of shooting test film and doing test prints if you're doing it without a sensitometer and a good understanding of maths.

And then they go and change the emulsion, dev or paper you standardised on so you're back so square one lol.

Personally, I cant be arsed. I just expose for the shadows, stand develop to help protect the highlights. I'm a hybrid printer, as long as I get slightly thin, full range neg, I can then get the result that matches my visualisation in photoshop :)

Probably the best thing you can take out of the zone system is to find your personal film speed, that way, you know at your standard dev times, what you expose at zone 5 is going to actually be zone 5. If anybodies interested, I can tell you how to do this?

Thought not.
 
I'm interested. Is this where you shoot at a grey card until it becomes 18% grey?
 
Right then;

You need to find the minimum exposure that will print zone 1, as that is the 'toe' of the film. It can be done visually, in the darkroom or via scanning (Which is what I did) as Vuescan allows you to use it as a densitometer by holding down th control key and moving the cursor over different parts of the image. Just scan it with no adjustments. You can download a trial of vuescan if you're justgoing to use it for this purpose. Doing it in the darkroom is a bit trickier.

1) load film and set to "box" iso
2) Set up a target, it must be big enough to fill the frame from 6 odd feet away. It can be gray, white or any neutral colour, but it must be flat and lit evenly
3) Camera on tripod and put into manual mode
4) Meter the target using your normal meter and set a reasonable shutter speed that will allow you to close down the aperture to 5 stops below (zone 1)
5) then shoot a set of images at the following settings;

a) Meter reading - Zone V
b) Blank frame - put the lens cap on
c) 5 stops less thank the meter reading. - Zone 0
d) 4 stops less than the meter reading -Zone I
e) 3 stops less than the meter reading - Zone II
f) 2 stops less than the meter reading - Zone III
 
Ok, so now you can go shoot the rest of the roll and then dev it to the dilution, type of dev and time you want to standardise on. This bit is entirely up to you. I prefer longer dev times so I use rodinal @ 1:100 for 20 minutes with a reduced agitation scheme. It does drag the dev times out for N+1 and N+2 but rather that than trying to dev a film for 2 mins for N-2
 
Assessing the results:

in my example (epson v700 & vuescan) you scan the frames and get the density of the blank frame, this is the inherent density of the film base and any fog from dev process or staining if you use that type of dev (pyrocat etc). Then scan the other successive frames and get the density. The frame that shows your film speed is the one that is 0.1 to 0.13 above the blank frame.

If test frame c is the speed frame then your true speed is 2x the test speed.
 If test frame d is the speed frame then your true speed is equal to the test speed.
 If test frame e is the speed frame then your true speed is ½ the test speed
 If test frame f is the speed frame then your true speed is ¼ the test speed

So if for instance you are testing adox chs 25 and your blank frame has a density of 0.30 when measured with the densitometer in vuescan and the other frames are as follows;

Frame c reads 0.30
 Frame d reads 0.33
 Frame e reads 0.40
 Frame f reads 0.48

 refering to the list above, this means frame e is the one that is 0.1-0.13 above the blank frame (0.30) so if the speed you set the camera at initially was 25 asa then your actual fim speed is half that, or 12 asa. If the density of frame f had been 0.1 above the blank frames density, then the film speed would have 6 asa.

 
Thanks so much for the explanation Gandhi.

A few clarifications, please

1. What the test frames c, d, e,f ?
2. What is the definition of speed frame?
 
Ah, sorry. Didnt make much sense the way i had it. I have tidied it up a bit now so the test frames and second list match up. I'm not the best at explaining things written down sometimes!

The speed frame is the frame you shot that measures .1 to .13 above the density reading of the blank frame you shot. Depending on which frame this is, it shows what your effective film speed is.

All of this is brought about by the fact that your meter, shutter, film choice, dev technique etc may mean that what you are metering zone 5 may not be coming out as zone 5 on the neg. This is especially true with large format where your meter may not be calibrated correctly or your shutter may be dragging etc.

You can see it more in higher speed films where they start to look like "soot and chalk" effectively, when a manufacturer rates a film at 1600, it may actually only have a real sensitivity of 400 so you are underexposing by 2 stops. If you then follow the dev instructions on the film box, you will overdevelop the film. The underexposure gives the sooty feel of no detail in the shadows and the over development means you then lose detail in the highlights too as they all get pushed over the shoulder of the films response curve.

Its all a bit technical though and you can get caught up in a whole world of science and maths and log graphs and such like. Fine if you enjoy that sort of thing.

Bottom line is......dont underexpose and dont over develop!
 
Ah, so another way to look at it is :

If the test speed is accurate and equal to the speed rated on the box ( which - the rated speed on the box - presumably is done through testing with accurate equipments) then the difference in density between zone I Frame ( meter reading -4stops) and blank frame is 0.13.
And if the diff is not 4 stops, that must be because of error in some equipment of the user - meter, shutter speed, developer, development time etc. And as long as that error is constant, its can then be corrected by adjusting the film speed setting of the camera. Makes sense
Ah so the density variation is a log ( or log-linear )curve. Not surprising, given most chemicals reactions exhibit log-linear properties. Hence the diff in density is not constant between the zones.

So is this 0.13 diff between the 'Frame of Meter Reading' and 'Frame of Meter Reading -4' constant for all film speed and all emulsions? Or are the emulsions made in such a way that the diff is always maintained at 0.13 ( what I mean is , there might be an emulsion which will exhibit a more sharp or softer front end in the curve, isn't it?

Thanks a lot for your kind help. Indeed, the more I think, the more I can see how the standardisation works. If I stick to the same film, same meter, same camera, same develper, same development technique, then I can get the exact tone that I want, irrespective of what the shade actually was. Indeed, much better that way than jumping around with films and developers. Is there a similar test for film papers ( where the film printing can be standardised)
 
It is important to realise that the Zone System covers not only exposure but individual development of each negative. Developer concentration and/or time may need to be varied to achieve the desired result. You then have to do the same thing with the printing stage.

Ansel Adams worked out his Zone System in the days before computers and, although the explanation given by Gandhi has much to recommend it as a modern approach, all that is needed is a simple camera and simple exposure meter. Plus a darkroom and lots and lots of patience.

A lot is written about dynamic range. The Adams Zone System view is that there are 10 zones with zone (0) being dead black and zone (x) being full white. He called that range the "full black to pure white" range and put brackets round the 0 and x (but not the inbetweens ) because he considered those extremes to be of very little use.
He considered zone i to zone ix to be the " dynamic range". He considered zone ii to zone viii to be the "textural range".

For good book on the subject the best choice - actually its a set of three - was written by Ansel Adams and including the best book printed images of his that I have ever seen. It should be said that the images don't match seeing the real thing but they are the best I have seen in a book. The books are quite old but can be found in second hand book shops.

The Camera. The Negative. The Print. By Ansel Adams. Part of the New Ansel Adams Photography Series published by Little, Brown and Company on behalf of the New York Graphic Society.
 
ujjwaldey8165 said:
Ah, so another way to look at it is :

If the test speed is accurate and equal to the speed rated on the box ( which - the rated speed on the box - presumably is done through testing with accurate equipments) then the difference in density between zone I Frame ( meter reading -4stops) and blank frame is 0.13.
Click to expand...

Yep, spot on. Except that for higher speed films, the manufacturer will often rate the film above its true EI and give extended development times. I think Ilford Delta 3200 is one of these. The true speed of the film is around 800 i think!

ujjwaldey8165 said:
And if the diff is not 4 stops, that must be because of error in some equipment of the user - meter, shutter speed, developer, development time etc. And as long as that error is constant, its can then be corrected by adjusting the film speed setting of the camera. Makes sense
Ah so the density variation is a log ( or log-linear )curve. Not surprising, given most chemicals reactions exhibit log-linear properties. Hence the diff in density is not constant between the zones.
Click to expand...

Again, spot on. it is indeed a log curve

ujjwaldey8165 said:
So is this 0.13 diff between the 'Frame of Meter Reading' and 'Frame of Meter Reading -4' constant for all film speed and all emulsions? Or are the emulsions made in such a way that the diff is always maintained at 0.13 ( what I mean is , there might be an emulsion which will exhibit a more sharp or softer front end in the curve, isn't it?
Click to expand...

Yes, films do exhibit different curves, some have a shallower 'toe' end to the curve, and for some the 'shoulder' rolls off more sharply. However, Zone 1 is always around log 0.1 above FB+F. I've never bothered to plot the log curve of any of the film I use though.

ujjwaldey8165 said:
Thanks a lot for your kind help. Indeed, the more I think, the more I can see how the standardisation works. If I stick to the same film, same meter, same camera, same develper, same development technique, then I can get the exact tone that I want, irrespective of what the shade actually was. Indeed, much better that way than jumping around with films and developers. Is there a similar test for film papers ( where the film printing can be standardised)
Click to expand...

Welcome. Its good to talk about this stuff for me cos it helps with my understanding of it too!
 
JohnW said:
The Camera. The Negative. The Print. By Ansel Adams. Part of the New Ansel Adams Photography Series published by Little, Brown and Company on behalf of the New York Graphic Society.
Click to expand...

Yeah, these^^

Havent gotten round to reading them yet and as a LF photographer, I probably really should.

And I thought geting out of digital would reduce the geek factor. In fact, if anything, I've become even worse! :puke:
 
i made a living from LF for about 40 years. Mostly 5x4 with some 10x8 and occasional 14x12 depending on the needs of the job. I used the Zone System all the time and find the books I listed as far and away the best for a simple explanation of the method.

This not in any way a criticism of you but Ansel Adams himself despaired at the way people had (in his view) overcomplicated what should be an easy to use way of getting the result you want. I take the view that photgraphy means different things to different people and if somebody wants to use a more complicated method thats fine by me as long as they enjoy it.

I don't do film anymore and have got rid all the reference books I accumulated over the years. The only exceptions being the 3 Adams books which I don't think I will ever sell.
 
TBH, Gandhi's explanation of zone system is the best ( and simplest to follow) I have read so far. He explained both why and how it can be used - especially 'the how' with mathematical precision. TBH, the Ansel Adams definitions in his book are also a bit subjective - in the sense that he describes them as he sees it, but the definition is not precisely measurable ( incidentally, the books are still in print - and the Negative is available in our local Waterstone. It also has a lovely coffee shop, and the coffee tastes much better while reading the book..:D)

The problem of reading it in a book with a photo showing the different zones is that one never knows what the precise definition of the zones are ( particularly when the photographs are a bit smudged anyways). With the density measurement, this definition is precise and hence more useful.
 
This is why I come here:
The Zone System and Sensitometric Evaluation of the Photographic Negative...

You don't get grown-up chat like this in the other sections...lol
 
The other sections are very busy with matters of great urgency such as arguments over what an incident meter is, serious stuff. Everything here moves at a slower, friendlier pace. We don't speak of such devilry as histograms and pixel peeping, in fact I almost feel guilty about using my pen and paper "exif" system :whistle:.
 
Great info there Gandhi, thanks. I've just started reading Zone VI Workshop and I think it's pretty much explaining what you've just summed up :)
 
Interesting thread.

I knocked myself out trying to "really and properly" learn the zone system years ago - until I met a guy from Fuji who told me that the manufacture of film (for Fuji and all others) was so inconsistent that you could only rely upon it within a 1 or 1.5 stop margin. At the time this struck me as a HUGE shock but having put thousands of rolls and thousands of sheets through E6 and b/w lines all over the world I absolutely know this to be completely true.
(shoot spares front and back and clip test everything) !

With this in mind all "alternative versions" of the zone system start to make more sense in a practical everyday way. Although, having gone through my long and arduous learning curve I will say that it is wise to remember that it is ALL about the print (not the neg or the technical geekiness of producing a perfect one) and (for me at least) what I learned from the zone system is now only of any use in the darkroom. Adams never had graded paper to play with and the earlier poster who mentioned the dynamic range of the output media was spot on.

Best wishes
Monty
 
MiniMonty said:
it is wise to remember that it is ALL about the print (not the neg or the technical geekiness of producing a perfect one)
Click to expand...
The Zone System as used by Ansel Adams starts in the photographers mind when he or she visualises the finished result. It continues through exposure, individual development of the negative, exposure and individual development and finishing of the print.


MiniMonty said:
Adams never had graded paper to play with
Click to expand...
Direct quote from The Print, chapter 3 by Ansel Adams

page 49
"Ilford gallerie. This is a paper of very high quality which I use extensively. It is available in four grades."

page 50

" ihave found that Kodabromide grade 4 tones very well with selenium, but the other grades do not"


There are pages of information and advice on the best way to use different makes and grades of printing paper.
 
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