For "The End of the World As We Know It"

DREW WILEY

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According to the ultimate authority, Ansel Adams, God created the world in just 8 discrete Zones. But Moses was given10, so probably would have gotten better shadows and highlights than AA if film had been around back then. But I prefer the continuous gradation of real film curves, so left the ZS behind in the rear-view mirror many years ago. It was always intended as a flexible rubber band anyway. But a few nut cases like Minor White made a kooky religion out of it anyway. There are lot of interesting idiosyncrasies in photo history. You could probably dedicate a museum to that alone. There's probably also a dedicated buggy whip museum somewhere too. I do know there is a museum dedicated to strictly umbrellas, so who knows?
 
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Donald Qualls

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DREW WILEY said:
According to the ultimate authority, Ansel Adams, God created the world in just 8 discrete Zones.
Click to expand...

I guess that depends on what part of the world you're looking at (or spot metering). Go out on a clear, sunny day in the mountains, and you can start to understand why N- development is an important tool (and why Ansel was so disappointed -- or at least sounded that way in print -- that "new" films had the contrast more "baked in" than the ones he'd learned on). I personally haven't photographed a scene where I needed a contraction to get within the Zone 3-8 range for important areas -- but I can easily see how they could exist for certain subjects, especially in the days before multi-grade paper allowed split filtering and split burning.
 

Sirius Glass

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8 zones, 10 zones, ... the exact number is probably not that critical. What is important is the methodology and the technique to get more detail in shadows for black & white or color negative films. For slides, it is useful to avoid having highlights blown out.
 

DREW WILEY

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You guys can continue the endless debates on number of zones, and who the real Guru of it all is. It's silly to begin with because not all films are the same. The Zone System is a helpful beginner learning tool, but reaches a dead end alley too soon for me. That's why I left it behind long ago. Yes, like I mentioned, it was intended as a flexible rubber band, and not a hard set of zone boundaries. But it's heavy reliance on things like "compression" or compensating development can bring a real penalty to fine tonal gradation in the middle of that peanut butter sandwich which the highway asphalt roller ran over. Heck, even the Canadian would agree with me on that one.

The ZS never made sense with color films, especially chromes, and never will, because hue rendition is not a neutral scale,
and you can't tweak color film development very much without things going seriously wrong.

Donald- I've walked ten or fifteen thousand miles in the mountains with large format gear and a spotmeter. Probably fewer than 2% of my black and white images involved minus processing. Choosing the appropriate film for the job - in that case, capable of handling high contrast well - alleviates stomping on the peanut butter sandwich afterwards, and squishing all the sparkle and life out of it, just like I already hinted above. The proof is in the pudding.
 
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Sirius Glass

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With the modern films I have yet to need minus processing. I have at times should have increased processing times for contrast not range. My "problems" are getting the range of modern negative film on to the paper. Split grading, local grading and bleaching help.
 

DREW WILEY

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Michael. You're confusing hypothetical curve range with "Zone 2, threshold of shadow gradation to Zone VIII, as the last zone with apparent highlight tonality". Hence people with little Zone number stickers on their meter dials, going from 1 to 8. If you had to deal with more stops of luminance range than that, you're supposed stomp it back down into 7 dynamic tonal steps with compression or minus dev, etc. That's sorta the old AA mantra. Barnbaum expected one to get everything within 3 and V8 instead, and then clean up the mud afterwards with a tank car full of Farmer's reducer. Minor White wanted you to jump into a gull-winged DeLorean time machine, and learn how to read the entrails of an owl from Merlin. We now just need one universal textbook to the whole of Zone theory, titled, "How to Make Easy Things Eight Times More Complicated Than They Need to Be", or "Seven Times", or "Ten Times", or "Eleven Times", or whatever.
 

drmoss_ca

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Good Lord, I wasted a perfectly good reference to Fifty Shades of Grey on you all. As punishment I shall set an essay to be written about Ansel Adam's response to the very concept of that many shades of grey. Extra points for including buggy whips.
 

Sirius Glass

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drmoss_ca said:
Good Lord, I wasted a perfectly good reference to Fifty Shades of Grey on you all. As punishment I shall set an essay to be written about Ansel Adam's response to the very concept of that many shades of grey. Extra points for including buggy whips.
Click to expand...

I saw it, understood it and promptly dumped it.
 

MattKing

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Photographer's Formulary has a sale on right now which includes sodium thiosulfate and metol in relatively large quantities.
 

Kino

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Tbernard said:
Mind if I ask, where did you buy the hypo and Metol from??
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It was supposed to be a joke; this is where I work and they buy it by the drum, but I can check with the purchasing agent after Thanksgiving if you are really interested...
 

Tbernard

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Kino said:
It was supposed to be a joke; this is where I work and they buy it by the drum, but I can check with the purchasing agent after Thanksgiving if you are really interested...
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My best option is a photo company in NY state that sells maybe by the pound and have it shipped across the border but can't find anyone in Canada for bulk amounts.
Sure the name and shipping info would be a great help..many thanks!
 

faberryman

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Tbernard said:
My best option is a photo company in NY state that sells maybe by the pound and have it shipped across the border but can't find anyone in Canada for bulk amounts.
Sure the name and shipping info would be a great help..many thanks!
Click to expand...
Artcraft sells photographic chemicals, and I believe they ship to Canada.

https://www.artcraftchemicals.com/
 
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Kino

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Tbernard said:
My best option is a photo company in NY state that sells maybe by the pound and have it shipped across the border but can't find anyone in Canada for bulk amounts.
Sure the name and shipping info would be a great help..many thanks!
Click to expand...

Remember, we buy by the skid or drum; it may not be economical for you.

Also, I left off the Perchloroethylene agent, as I doubt anyone needs 55 gal. drums on Photrio!

Acetic Acid and HQ come from Clayton Chemical
http://www.claytonchem.com/

Elon and Photo Flow come from Kodak
https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/page/tested-laboratory-chemicals

Boric Acid, Sodium Thio, Potassium Alum, and Sodium Sulfite come from Tilley
https://www.tilleycompany.com/

Bromide from Fisher Scientific
https://www.fishersci.com
 

DREW WILEY

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Sodium sulfite? Just wring out some of your salad next time you visit a Denneys of McDonalds. It's also used as an anti-oxidant in wines. But by the time the end of the world gets close, much of the human race will have already evolved in unison with the new food pyramid itself, with required daily amounts of MSG, sodium nitrite, high fructose corn syrup, and other added added ingredients like sodium sulfite. Things like real citrus slices with actual vitamin C in it will be toxic to this new iteration of the human species. It will be named, Homo Teenagenthropus.
 

Kino

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Yeah, the safety people cringe in horror when I point out that they eat and wear a lot of the chemistry we tote around in 50 lb sacks. Somehow they can't accept that they use CHEMICALS in their daily lives...

Oh the horror!
 

mohmad khatab

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You want to hire someone who owns a car.
He comes to visit you from another state with his car and with all the items you need.
Can this plan work for you?
Please answer me .
I have other solutions and ideas.
Just answer me so I can try to help you.
do not worry ,
Perhaps your Egyptian brother who lives near the pyramids can help you, do not rule out this possibility, even if it is weak
 

DREW WILEY

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Kino - there are plenty of people extremely sensitive to sodium sulfite, one a family member of mine. She can only drink Euro wines with no added sulfite, and risks an ambulance ride if she eats a fast food joint salad. She had to use her emergency epi-pen on a recent flight due to that. Now lets take something even more basic, like a developer recipe calling for sodium chloride. So you just fetch some kitchen table salt and it all comes out wrong. Read the actual ingredients : some added titanium dioxide, just like house paint whitener, iodide of course. Now if we could just rediscover those unknown contaminants which accidentally created a few actual color Daguerrotypes way back when ... and I don't mean hand-painted ones. Hard to imagine they were in contact with things worse than mercury, but maybe they were. The only thing worse than a mad hatter would be one who glows in the dark.
 

Tbernard

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Thanks for the information! Will check it out.

Tom
 
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