It would be helpful to me as an amateur if more people showed their pictures so I and others can see what they're talking about when they provide aesthetic or technical suggestions and ideas. It seems like 90%+ of the posters here don't have a gallery here or provide a link to another site. Unless I:m missing something when I look at their profile page, I can't find the pictures.
I'm afraid we have a lot of those people here in the forums.examples are great, however there are many people who have the book learning, but not the field experience.
Meaning they can recite page after page from the "survival manual for those lost in the forest", but have never done it, never been IN the forest, and if dropped off in the forest in july, with a tent, a propane stove, beef jerky, canned food to last 5 people a week on monday morning, would be found tuseday morning either starved to death or frozen to death.
I'm afraid we have a lot of those people here in the forums.Of course, not having practical experience, they're just repeating what they read, what someone else's opinion is. And that opinion could be rubbish. How would they know? "Show me the money!" Even those who do have a lot of experience reduce their arguments. How do I know they know what they're talking about if they can;t show me the proof? Why should I believe them? How do I separate experience from wishful thinking without seeing samples? When you buy a camera, isn't it better to handle it first? I just discard a lot of opinions I read here.
Also, someone might recommend a procedure that could work out best for me. But I want to see the results before I spend time trying it. Maybe the results aren't really what I'm looking for. I'm not going to waste time trying some new procedure, where I can't determine beforehand if the results are something I want. Example: Someone argues that developer type ABC is the best for sharpness. So who's going to go out and buy and try that without seeing samples stopping their old way of doing things? There are dozens of opinions along this line every day. Samples are a way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Yeah... Just identify middle gray, and then wonder why you have so much trouble getting decent shadow or highlight gradation in contrasty scenes. That's exactly why the Zone System needed to be invented. Not all of us are satisfied with a "good enough for government work" mentality.
You know what I haveYeah... Just identify middle gray, and then wonder why you have so much trouble getting decent shadow or highlight gradation in contrasty scenes. That's exactly why the Zone System needed to be invented. Not all of us are satisfied with a "good enough for government work" mentality. No, I don't personally adhere to Zone System methodology; but knowing exactly where I want my dynamic range to fall in terms of shadow exposure specifically, and in relation to highlight reproduction specifically, is far more important than identifying middle gray in black and white work. That's what spotmeters are so nice for. ... and what digital cameras are so miserable at. Who wants imitation ice milk when you can have real ice cream?
And in this case, we're speaking about Wynn Bullock, who really skated on the edge in terms of tightly nuanced contrast print extremes using Azo paper. That would be an almost impossible task to do the imitation ice milk way - it would look imitation!
Color film technique is somewhat different because you're not dealing with just a gray scale, but with hue specific hues saturate based on given exposure.
How does Butcher get those black skies all the time?The Zone System is a method of understanding your materials and training your mind and eye to work with them. There are other ways that some folks use just as well. Clyde Butcher told me he uses a spotmeter, picks out the area he wants as middle gray, and determines his exposure. Minor White in his New Zone System Manual suggests doing the same, then controlling shadow values with developer time and temperature and high values with agitation.
How does Butcher get those black skies all the time?
When you learn about dodging and burning, you will understand that using the Zone Systems to get the best negative to work with, and the act of burning and dodging the print are two very different activities. Your statement is like asking why should I follow a chefs receipe to bake a cake when the same chef has to do all that extra work to decorate the cake after it is baked....
I cannot understand most of the data shown on film data sheets, about curves, gamma, etc. I dont get the zone system at all because if it was as infallible as Adams claimed it was, why was he having to dodge and burn the print as much as he did?
..."
I agree that it would be nice to have more attention to aesthetic considerations.When a print is primarily judged as being successful because of tonality alone you can bet your bottom dollar it's being reviewed by another photographer with minimal understanding of art appreciation.
I can't count how many crappy images I have been handed by photographers who believe it's MOMA material. When I ask them what makes this print good they generally point to some highlight they were able to retain or some boring detail in the shadows they captured. Their concern for what's going on in the rest print seems to have escaped their attention.
To make a truly expressive print is complex and hard work. Unfortunately many photographers spend a lot of time mastering the zone system and then stop there.
To much time is spent on technical matters and other arcane things on Photrio and not enough time discussing what makes an image "work" as a piece of art.
Maybe Photrio is the techie/nerd forum and there is a better forum for those who want to further their journey in the world of expressive, impactful imagery.
Just mho.
Print qualities are themselves aesthetic considerations.I agree that it would be nice to have more attention to aesthetic considerations.
He must be doing more than just using orange filters. I don't get those kinds of dark skies with just the filter. He must be burning and dodging a lot.Clyde told me, and showed me, that he uses orange filters. He also shoots wide for format lenses so take he can get the higher up portions of the shy. At least in Florida, the sky close to the ground is filled with humidity and photographs light grey regardless of filter. Higher up. The air is clearer and much more blue, so the orange filter darkens the sky.
When a print is primarily judged as being successful because of tonality alone you can bet your bottom dollar it's being reviewed by another photographer with minimal understanding of art appreciation.
I can't count how many crappy images I have been handed by photographers who believe it's MOMA material. When I ask them what makes this print good they generally point to some highlight they were able to retain or some boring detail in the shadows they captured. Their concern for what's going on in the rest print seems to have escaped their attention.
To make a truly expressive print is complex and hard work. Unfortunately many photographers spend a lot of time mastering the zone system and then stop there.
To much time is spent on technical matters and other arcane things on Photrio and not enough time discussing what makes an image "work" as a piece of art.
Maybe Photrio is the techie/nerd forum and there is a better forum for those who want to further their journey in the world of expressive, impactful imagery.
Just mho.
Or as they say, you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.The Zone System is, at best, bastardised sensitometry - and actual sensitometery doesn't purport to be an arbiter of aesthetic truth, merely a useful scientisation of photographic materials' observable behaviour. Used in pursuit of a variety of aesthetic goals, applied sensitometry is incredibly useful & straightforward, unlike the garbled verbiage of the bizarre midtone obsessions observable in this thread (I'd like to see them try to index a midtone on an SEI spot meter of the sort seen in one of the more famous bits of Ansel Adams footage).
The Zone System (and similar) further appeals as a form of pseudo-governance to a certain mentalité because it seems to produce a numericised (but facile in reality) value system which, in the manner of 'Top Trumps' or similar games lets people delude themselves into believing that ticking all the Zone-System-Bingo boxes will make whatever image their overwrought camera-handling produced somehow have some sort of measurable value as art. Which is, as you point out, nonsense. Art criticism would require giving more considered and thought through opinions and risking having to give complicated answers which do not comply with a 'right/ wrong' binary - and it can't be numericised in facile ways (though there have been some amazingly stupid attempts at this).
Digital cameras provide spot metering either in Aperture or Shutter priority or manual or automatic modes. I don't know which mode your Pentax meter uses. But you could set a digital camera with the same priority mode.I just noticed Raghu's question, so apologize for the delay in responding. No, I do no use any kind of onboard TTL camera metering. I've done experimental comparisons enough times to realize that I want to think for myself and not presume a camera program can do it better, because it can't. I use handheld Pentax digital spotmeters for all my camera needs, all the way from 35 mm to 8X10 formats. And I'll never buy a self-driving car either, if they ever catch on. I want complete control of the outcome.
I'm not asking him to use a hammer. I'm just pointing out that the technology between a dedicated meter and a digital camera's exposure programs are pretty much the same as far as I can tell. If someone has a digital camera already, they wouldn't have to buy a meter, necessarily to get spot metering. I do that as well as use it as a viewfinder to compose my shot and to view it in BW. For many not as experienced as Drew, like me, that can be very helpful.Alan,
I doubt Drew would use a hammer when he needs a screwdriver.
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