Great beginners article on Zone System and Sunny 16

Alan Edward Klein said:

It's a hodgepodge. I've been shooting decades, understand Sunny 16 and while I never used the Zone system, I have a general idea of it. But the article is incomprehensible in the way it was written. If I can't understand his point and what he's talking about, how is a beginner?

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The essence of the article is that...
All light meters* give camera settings that result in film being exposed so that, if the film is developed and printed 'normally', an 18% gray card looks grey in the print (again, assuming nominal process parameters). This is often expressed as simply, "the light meter assumes that it is metering an 18% gray". This has some important implications. For example, if you point your hand held reflective meter at a white wedding gown, and process normally, the white gown will be gray. Likewise, if you point the meter at the Black tuxedo, it will turn out grey. And , if you have both the white dress and black tux in the same scene on a bright summer day with strong shadows and meter using sunny-16 or an incident meter or point the built in meter at the grass in front of you, the black will be very black and the white very white. Likely there will be no detail in either of them so...If you want the lace in the white dress to show in the print, and you do not want the dress to be gray, you have to do something (Obviously, getting detail in the dress is more important than getting detail in the groom's black tux! )...In this case, you could meter the dress and give (maybe?) two more stops of exposure by either opening up the aperture two stops or using a slower shutter speed (eg use 1/60 instead of 1/250). You give MORE exposure because, again, you want the dress to look white not gray.

oh, and the other point that the author (very thankfully) makes is that there's a lot more to sunny-16 than simply, "set shutter speed to 1/(film speed) and set the aperture to f/16"! Properly done, it is FAR more complex than that.

*Note that it does not matter if you're using a $400 spot meter, the meter built into the camera or a hand held meter or, yes, even Sunny-16 (sunny-16 uses the most sophisticated light meter known to exist, the human eyes and brain). All of these light meters, when properly used, give camera settings that make grey look grey. They place 18% gray in zone V.

Rick A said:

Wow, didn't take long before the worlds foremost authorities poo-poo'd this. Get a life.
Thank you for taking the time to post this Eric, and for thinking it would help some people, much appreciated.

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When one starts a thread, one should expect the topic of the thread to be discussed (along with any tangents that arise). Anybody, whether or not they are experts, is perfectly free to respond to the thread however they wish (subject to the rules). This should be expected. People are perfectly free to comment with their opinions...that's kinda the whole point of a discussion forum - to discuss stuff.

Further, the OP of a thread does not get to prescribe the nature of the responses and should not get hurt feelings if people respond the topic presented with other than praise and adoration for the OP.

The OP called this article for beginners. But the article's author I believe didn't say anything about beginners. In fact, just trying to understand the Zone system by itself, or the Sunny 16 procedures by itself, is more than enough for a beginner. Trying to operate both of these together is way above a beginner's head. That's my opinion and I hope a beginner will not feel stupid if he doesn't understand the article.

Secondly, there's little relationship between Zone and Sunny 16. It just complicates both systems. One would be better off using one or the other. Especially if you're a beginner. Also, his writing is totally incomprehensible, especially for a beginner who wouldn't understand what he's talking about at all. The OP asked this be tacked as a "sticky" learning thread for beginners. I disagree.

Sirius Glass said:

I missed them all by using AdBlock Plus for Firefox.

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I'll miss them next time by not going back. ;-)

My simple exposure method for a beginner shooting ISO 100.

Something similar...

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:

Sunny 16 lovers might find this article interesting and helpful:

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/train_your_brainto_guess_.html

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Another interesting article. Thanks a bunch.

This has been a very worthwhile day and a good post.

Vaughn said:

I get the feeling it was written specifically to have ads around it.

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You are a very smart and genius man.

Maybe I'm missing the controversy, but it made sense to me.

It has been 30 years since I taught Freshman Art 101, and I currently only teach PhD level students. On an internet forum it is almost impossible to know the background knowledge of a "new post asking for help." Thus, why I have asked a number of times to have a specific beginner section.
When someone posts an esoteric question about the Zone system in the "Exposure" forum, they may be a PhD level researcher, and they would get an answer at that level. Perhaps, though, the poster is a curious beginner exposing the first roll of film with no place else to post the question. They might be better served with a dedicated sub-forum.

For those of you that have a problem with ads in general, I suggest you look into /etc/hosts. I you google "ads /etc/hosts" you will probably find what you need. This works for sure on the non windows for sure. Maybe on windows in some form. You need to be root to edit the file. Be very careful if your not comfortable at that level.

BradS said:

When one starts a thread, one should expect the topic of the thread to be discussed (along with any tangents that arise). Anybody, whether or not they are experts, is perfectly free to respond to the thread however they wish (subject to the rules). This should be expected. People are perfectly free to comment with their opinions...that's kinda the whole point of a discussion forum - to discuss stuff.

Further, the OP of a thread does not get to prescribe the nature of the responses and should not get hurt feelings if people respond the topic presented with other than praise and adoration for the OP.

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When any of use see a post with a url, we look at the url and form each our own opinion without regard to who was the one to post it. If one does not like or agree with the url does not reflect on the poster. Eric please stop taking these things so personally.

Sirius Glass said:

When any of use see a post with a url, we look at the url and form each our own opinion without regard to who was the one to post it. If one does not like or agree with the url does not reflect on the poster. Eric please stop taking these things so personally.

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Yes. well said.

I love emulsive and while I don't use the zone system I see it has value for people who rely in it to do their thing. I use sunny 11 more than any thing but I stopped using it a while back and just expose everything wide open at 1/4S

@Eric Rose: If Sunny 16 can be seen as a poor photographer's incident metering technique, then the technical question underlying the article you shared is this: how to make zone system compatible with incident metering. Now that's a terrible (for beginners) or terrific (for geeks) problem to handle.

As someone rightly observed earlier, the article could have kept the discussion on zone system aside and talked about exposure compensation for Sunny 16 which is certainly a useful trick for Sunny 16 practitioners and also easily understood by beginners.

If a beginner wants to learn the venerable zone system it's imperative that she has access to a good reflective meter. On the other hand, if she doesn't want to use a meter at all then it's imperative that she learns to guess the exposure beyond Sunny 16 which is what the TOP article I shared talks about.