Pentax Digital Spotmeter - Zone Scale

[jessenator]

So my brother in law has long-term-loaned me one and I wanted to make a zone system scale for it, which I have.

Big question, since I plan on sharing it once it's final [don't use this one, since it's waaaay off scale] (even though most people have probably made their own…):

Since it covers the rather esoteric IRE scale, but the window is smaller than the whole scale, should I just truncate it to have the scale indicators cover the window, or just put the whole scale on there?

The black outlined box represents the scale window visibility.

I went through and measured the EV indicators and found them to be 5.5mm apart, with the 3rd stops in between. The current scale, with extra space on the sides (grey), is 100mm wide and 7mm tall, so as not to cover the orange arrow completely.

The standard film zones are white-labeled, while the deep shadows and highlights are shades of grey.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[John Koehrer]

Could you just reduce it when making a copy? That would affect height and width though.

 

[Bill Burk]

Did you see my thread on making a Zone Ruler?

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Look at the grays that I selected for Zone 0 through Zone X for the 0.57 CI negative on Galerie 2

A good Zone Scale would try to show grays close to what you will get on the print.
It's not an equal spacing of density or percent.

For my Zone Rulers, I used these Print Reflective Densities. Mine is from actual print chips but you could at least try to simulate the progression by converting to percent (or whatever scale your design application allows)...

You're welcome to use these values from my experiment, or try to come up with real values from your own process...

Zone - Print Reflective Density

Zone X 0.08
Zone IX 0.10
Zone VIII 0.16
Zone VII 0.30
Zone VI 0.52
Zone V 0.84
Zone IV 1.19
Zone III 1.52
Zone II 1.64
Zone I 1.74
Zone 0 1.80

 

[jessenator]

Thanks for that. I think I'll try and make them close to the print values, but cmyk printers are pretty terrible. I think I have an old pantone chip book i could use to make a nice zone sheet for home. but it's pretty minuscule when applied onto the meter itself, so I may just resign myself to a relative scale.

Mainly, I'm curious if I should include the whole scale or. Trim it to the size of the window.

As far as value, good reminder. I recall my brief stint in 3d rendering and how infuriating it was that mmycolor values were so off.

I'm using Adobe illustrator to make the scale. I measured all the dimensions wrapping some paper and meticulously drawing the stop (ev) indicators onto it, then measuring with a printers ruler, so the final version (PDF) will have precise measurements when printed (unless one's home printer mangles the scaling of a document when printing...)

Sent from my LG-V410 using Tapatalk

 

[Jim Noel]

The actual value on the scale is relatively immaterial. I have these scales on 3 different meters and always, I repeat, always look at the numeral, ignoring the tonal scale.

 

[Bill Burk]

The actual value on the scale is relatively immaterial. I have these scales on 3 different meters and always, I repeat, always look at the numeral, ignoring the tonal scale.

That's fine when Zones are already a strong abstraction in your mind.

And I agree, it doesn't need to be absolutely perfect.

I just think it would be better to have the values closer to the print values. Especially if it means typing a couple different numbers in a swatch definition. And since I just walked through finding these values, the timing seems right to plug them in.