That's all I want to do right now is learn the basics of ZS. After I start printing and developing more, I can delve into it deeper. I appreciate the thought out reply. IT actually has helped me out in understanding the ZS.
You don't really need the Zone System to do all this, however. The real advantage of the Zone System is as a tool for visualizing the final print and making your exposure and development choices based on that rather than just making a standard, plain vanilla, "printable" negative. For many, however, this is all the Zone System they need. Learning how to meter effectively and getting all the information they want on the negative lets them print it "any way they want."
Use the spot meter to take a light reading of the shadow which you want the details to be printed and set that in Zone 2 or Zone 3 as you prefer and print as YOU chose.
Oh and you will always print to make the picture look good no matter what the exposure was.
Bruce Barnbaum in a video says to put the shadows you want in Zone 4 while exposing and printing at Zone 3. Anyone tried this out?
138S,
I suspect the change to ASA in 1960 caused the general advice to shift to “place shadow on Zone III”.
138S,
Everything you wrote is factually correct.
Each story can lead to a thread in itself.
To the original question... Zone System tests establish Zone I as the exposure that gives 0.10 density and at four stops reduced exposure from meter reading.
So exactly as 138S says, that’s where the film starts responding with enough contrast to reveal dark detail in a print.
So why not place your shadow on Zone I? (Rhetorical question. Perhaps because you want detail to start being visible and for that you need some room to go darker).
No you don’t place shadow on Zone I. Even Minor White asked you to place your shadow on Zone II.
I suspect the change to ASA in 1960 caused the general advice to shift to “place shadow on Zone III”.
Barnbaum is charming and the storytelling is wonderful but the straight line starts much lower than he tells you.
But if you place shadow on Zone VI... Now you are at three stops greater exposure than minimum and I caution you ... you might have heard “shoot at half box speed”.
Rate the film speed lower and now you are (basically) placing shadow at Zone V, four stops greater exposure than required. If you want to enlarge, the print time will have to be four times (so what would be a 15 second print time is a minute).
Bottom line. You can do it but already placing shadows on Zone II is enough and Zone III is more than enough.
ZS is founded on previsualization...followed by metering exposing developing and printing on predetermined paper and paper development.
Slide film is an entirely other kettle of fish.
You’re right jtk, previsualization / visualization or whatever one would call it when you have an idea in your mind’s eye of how you want to have the picture turn out... is the great strength of the Zone System. The ZS can be used to get the right exposure and development for the situation... But it’s promise is that you can start with a preconceived notion of how the print will turn out, and you can deliberately expose and develop to set the stage for what you had in mind, and the print will almost naturally come out the way you expected.
I have a related little write-up in the resources. Go to post 15 for updated links...
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/divided-attention.127205/
Makes sense. Still trying to wrap my head around the zone system.
On occasion will put a light shadow in Zone IV. If I put the darkest shadow that I want the detail to print, I usually will end up with a denser than usual negative and printing exposures typically take longer.
ZS is far more about understanding correlation between exposure/development/printing and how one affects the next, thus how these interrelations can be used to get the desired result in the easiest possible way. Not about any placement of any detail on any zone. Same applies to any process of any kind: understand it and set yourself free to use it as desired.
Let say my personal point of view about that.
Ansel Adams recived visualization "divine illumination")) while shooting the "Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, California". He was using a pretty bad lens, an Adon glass...
View attachment 242889
ZS core is the visualization technique, a high dynamic range scene does not fit in the dynamic range of paper, so you end placing "standard" 11 zones (0 to 10) totalling 11 stops dynamic range in a paper medium that sports 6.5 stops, so certain zones are compressed to allow the mids to have a natural gradation. This is common sense...
With the spot meter you know what scene zones will be compressen in the paper, Z-I, and Z-II are in the toe, Z-VII and Z-IX are in the shoulder, so they are compressed.
By adjusting exposure and development, and by taking advantage of film toe/shoulder we have the print as we visualized it. Of course we may make additional burn/dodge.
But several things changed since then:
> now we have some linear films that won't do the compressions in the capture, we have to do it in the printing.
> today we use Variable Contrast papers, so we may burn different areas in the print with a contrast filter, so we may adjust contrast locally !
Anyway ZS is core knowledge, we may use the specific recipe or not, but the important ZS thing is that paper has not the same Dynamic Range than the scene, so we have to visualize our print and then do what necessary to compress or to expand certain scene zones to allow shadows+mids+highlights fit in the paper range. Optic Printing may start before shutter release.
visualizing correctly is the problem for many.
Mortensen said it’s a waste of time to try to hit the middle perfectly when the corners are so much more interesting.
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