Which came first, the zone system or the artist's impression of grays?

One of my side jobs is as an art model. Sometimes we go right to drawing, in which case, I doff my bathrobe and step onto the stand. Other times, I sit quietly at the back of the room while the professor lectures. Last friday, Dr. Grawonski was telling the students about the usage of charcole, graphite, or black/white paint. She described a series of tones from pure black to white. 10 practical steps, 12 actual steps. The way she described the artists use of black to white tones, I had the firm impression that this technique had been in use for at least 100 years. Was Ansel exposed to this teaching too?

Did she mention the name Munsell? He devised a scheme for assigning numbers to colors, which included a grayscale similar to Ansel's.

100 years??? The Lascaux caves go back a bit farther.

It is impossible to create visual art without two contrasting materials; as soon as there is art there is tone control.

Don't the grays refer to stops so there's a formula to determine each gray tone.

SchwinnParamount said:

One of my side jobs is as an art model. Sometimes we go right to drawing, in which case, I doff my bathrobe and step onto the stand. Other times, I sit quietly at the back of the room while the professor lectures. Last friday, Dr. Grawonski was telling the students about the usage of charcole, graphite, or black/white paint. She described a series of tones from pure black to white. 10 practical steps, 12 actual steps. The way she described the artists use of black to white tones, I had the firm impression that this technique had been in use for at least 100 years. Was Ansel exposed to this teaching too?

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Don't you get shades of gray with charcoal based on the degree of hardness of the stick? I sort of doubt there are 10/12 discrete grades of hardness of charcoal. Probably the Manufacturing Council on Artist Charcoal Sticks got together and agreed on manufacturing standards, and decided that ten grades (actually I think it is seven - HB to 6B) would be enough. I bet if you got charcoal sticks from all of the charcoal stick manufacturers, you would find more than 10/12 shades of gray among them, manufacturing variances being what they are. Of course, if you use graphite instead of charcoal, there are 16 official hardness grades, undoubtedly brought to you courtesy of the Manufacturing Council on Graphite Pencils. Same caveat with respect to manufacturing variances applies.

Anyone think that there are only ten shades of grey in photography? News flash: black to white is a continuum, the Zone System notwithstanding.

Before you doff your bathrobe at the next class, you may want to ask the good professor for clarification, and report back.

faberryman said:

Don't you get shades of gray with charcoal based on the degree of hardness of the stick? I sort of doubt there are 10/12 discrete grades of hardness of charcoal. Probably the Manufacturing Council on Artist Charcoal Sticks got together and agreed on manufacturing standards, and decided that ten grades would be enough. I bet if you got charcoal sticks from all of the charcoal stick manufacturers, you would find more than 10/12 shades of gray among them, manufacturing variances being what they are. Of course, if you use graphite instead of charcoal, there are 16 official hardness grades, undoubtedly brought to you courtesy of the Manufacturing Council on Graphite Pencils. Same caveat with respect to manufacturing variances applies.

Anyone think that there are only ten shades of grey in photography? News flash: black to white is a continuum, the Zone System notwithstanding.

Before you doff your bathrobe at the next class, you may want to ask the good professor for clarification, and report back.

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I thought there were 50?

(Someone had to say it.)

As human beings, those of us with too much time on our hands like to name things, define them, and then argue about the differences between them. How many shades of gray can dance on the head of a pin? I don't know.

But it is one thing to say there are so many shades of gray between black and white -- and something else to discuss how many shades of gray we actually see.

In the photo below you can see the smaller center rectangle is a continuum of shades of gray from a light gray on the left to dark gray on the right.



But, if I select the same inner rectangle and present it on a continuous tone background, we can see the center rectangle is actually a single shade of gray.



I think visual artists who work in two-dimensional media have always been able do their work with whatever materials they can get their hands on. An engraving or pencil drawing may use only two tones to create the illusion of many tones by cross hatching. And we perceive those tones as three dimensional objects on the two dimensional page. So the question is not so much, How many tones do you have to work with? - but, How many tones will your viewer perceive? - and, can you create the illusion you want to present? Whether we photographers have 10 shades of gray to work with (or 8 or 12), I would say there is plenty of evidence that it is enough for our purposes.

Nicholas Lindan said:

100 years??? The Lascaux caves go back a bit farther.

It is impossible to create visual art without two contrasting materials; as soon as there is art there is tone control.

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Obviously I wasn't referring to the act of painting itself. [...] I was specifically referring to the division of grays into 10 zones in two different but extremely similar systems. Ansel's zone system and this artistist system.

I expect that 10 is merely a coincidence that resonates with everyone used to a numbering system based on 10.
Although ten "stops" has at least a partial relationship with the films that were current when the Zone System was being distilled from the much more complex science of sensitometry.

Nicholas Lindan said:

100 years??? The Lascaux caves go back a bit farther...

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There are geometric symbol and hand print cave paintings in Europe which predate the arrival of modern Humans by over 20,000 years.

One can imagine Neanderthal fireside discussions about which source of red ochre was the best, so these debates might predate us.