Had a couple of comments and an enquiry about an off-handed remark I made on St Ansel and the “Zone System” last post.
So for the Non-tech heads—Click away now. Nothing to see here!
If you’re still reading, the majority of the blog is a tad (ok a great big bulge) Tongue in Cheek.
The Zone System, and pre-visualistation (What last weeks blog was about) were the brainchild(ren) of Ansel Adams and Fred Archer. Historical issue, they were photographing in the 1930s using mostly large format cameras, exposing one sheet of filum at a time. Due a range of limitations in technology at the time, the filums cannot be compared to today’s clever chemisty and technological advancements, nor can they begin to be compared to whatever clever senor you have in your sparkling new Mirrorless camera. (What. Don’t tell me you’re back in the days of wooden wagon wheels with one of them oldfashioned, outdated DSLRs (Taylor Swift wouldn’t been seen out with one of them))
Adams and Archer worked with scientists from Kodak who had explored the amount of light reflected from most average scenes. (You know it was what was printed on the box or leaflet with each roll of film) Kodak Scientists had figured out the average scene reflected around 12-13% brightness or more correctly incident illumination . And designed their exposure recommendations accordingly.
St Ansel (et al.) wanted the number to be closer to 18% and after some discussions Kodak introduced into their product line the truly amazing “Neutral Test Card” with its equally infamous Publication “R-27” leaflet. Which orginally—then didn’t—and then did again—included a paragrah that the reading from the exposure meter needed to be increased by 1/2stop from the meter reading. (Of course who reads instructions? and that maybe is why a certain copywriter took the paragraph out sometime in the late 1960-70s, and why it was reinserted after the ‘error’ was discovered.)
St Ansel (et al.) needed the extra one half stop or so exposure to comply with their:
Maxim of the Day
1. Always expose for the shadows and let the highlights be corrected in development.
(As an aside if you’ve ever seen an St. Ansel original negative its a very thin low contrast thing.)
2 Previsualise how the range of tones will print.
So they could work out what was going to be printable or not, they Pre-visualised those brightness values into 11 “Zones” Oh, welcome back skim reader.
Zone 0 would be as black as old boots and contain no detail, Zone X would be white as driven snow and contain no detail. In the middle Zone 5 would contain…….
Mid-tones.
And midtone err sorry, Zone 5 was 18% reflectance.
Insert Small ding ding bell to large clang of claxton.
What does all this have to do with Digital Photography.
Memo: Absolutely Nuthin!
Current Maxim from Michael Richman for Luminous Landscapes and Thomas Knoll—He, the author of the orginal Photoshop
1. Expose to the right. (ETTR) Or another way to say Expose for the Highlights and correct Shadows with the clever sliders which have replaced mixing up your own special developer brew. These days we call them “Presets” and who doesn’t have a harddrive full of them and never used?
2. Be careful what you point the “Spot” meter in camera at to be sure it’s going to be Zone 5. Or you could point it at say a Zone 3 value and adjust the exposure accordingly. But…really. Read the Memo.
If you point it at say the black feathers on a Black-shouleder Kite, and make no adjustments, the shot is going to be “Over Exposed” as the meter will try to expose to make the black—mid grey. if the Kite stays still long enough and you point it at the White chest feathers, and make no adjustments, the end result is gong to be…… wait for it…… Yes. Correct. Underexposed. Because the meter will try to expose to make the white—mid grey.
St. Ansel, exposed one sheet of film at a time and made notes on the development required.
We shoot a burst of 50 shots and hope we can find the right slider to correct it.
As an aside, my fav Black and White Monochrome software is Nik Software’s Nik Silver Efex
It has in its repertoire a little thumbnail and a tiny Zone system. Click on a ‘zone value’ and it gives Zebra stripes to those values in the photo. Yellow/Orange down the 1 and 2 end and a curious choice of Red to Black in the uppers. I’ve put some examples at the end of the blog.
So shoot often, shoot regularly, shoot with thought and don’t be bogged down with a system that for the vast majority of photographers (specialist landscapers, you won’t have read this far anyway).
We all get caught—some over or underexposed shots. But, we learn from that, and hopefully next time we are better prepared.
St. Ansel and Fred did the photography community a great service in helping to figure out the tonal values of a scene. Michael and Lord Thomas, gave us some freedom to experiement to get the best out of our digital chips, and no doubt have helped engineers train their product better.
So there you have it the 7 mega-zillionth explantation of St. Ansel’s system, Or you could just read his “The Negative ” book, and cut out the middle man.
Keep takin’ pictures. We do.
Here are three images from the SFx software.
Best to click on the images full size to see the colours. I made some corrections to the lower zones in the third one of them and you can see the change in the little tiny (next to useless) “Curves” view.
Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER doesn't mean I'm LOST 
Zone 5 my thought was, ” Oh my little gray card for color correction!” LOL! Great post actually and a beautiful Kite! It’s my favorite of the Raptors. We don’t have them where I live now sadly. I’ve always said if I could come back in another life as a bird this would be the one.
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Hello CF, yep, I’d reckon these days most gre(a)y cards mostly are used for whitebalance.
Could have used it this morning as the rising sun was a blood red of biblical proportions because of the smoke from some bushfires that are burning out of control an hour or so’s drive away.
In another universe when I photographed weddings on a range of cameras, including ‘blads and Rollies, the filum of choice was Kodak Vericolour II At the start of a bridal sequence we’d always shoot a card in the picture so the processing lab had something to point their clever colour caliabration devices at to make prints.
Same deal today for us setting Colour Temp for wlld Kelvin variations. Else most of the time, the tools in just about every post-process app gives a pretty good opportunity to get it right after the event. That little eyedropper tool just needs to find a neutral spot. As an early mentor used to say as we waved the WB pointer over the screen, “They seek it here, they seek it there. Those Photographers seek it everywhere. Is it in Shadow, or is it in Highlight,? That demned elusive Neutral Point.”
We are fotunate to have access to these lovely birds most of the year. Some become quite famillair and may stay and nest over several seasons.
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How wonderful about the Kites sometimes staying for several seasons. They did where I used to live in California.
I had a recipe for finding the neutral spot fairly quick to get the white balance right without poking around at different spots, but I haven’t used it in ages since the eye dropper does a pretty good job of getting right these days.
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A fascinating discussion, David!
I am glad I (hopefully) learned a thing or two with film, but also that I live in the digital age.
Dave
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Hi David,
Most of St Ansel’s challenge was in the narrow range of exposures available to him because of the narrow latitude of the early mono films. One of his techniques was to use a two bath developer The slow second bath allowed the shadows (thin parts) to continue to develop as the chemicals exhausted faster in the highlights, (darker areas)
I once worked with a photographer that used a similar, but single bath for a filum everybody hated. Ilford HP3 (Even the Ilford techs were disparaging). Yet he ended up with portrait negs that printed on a #3 higher grade paper and belted out the best DMax while keeping the skin tone looking good.
And we think it pretty ordinary if we pull down the highlight slider and can’t get details in the washed out highlights. 🙂
Big blood red sky this morning. Most ominous.
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A very interesting read David. I’m so glad, like Dave, to be in the digital age!
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Hello Eleanor, I shot my last serious filum for a job in 2002. Shot both digital and filum. Put the rolls on top of the refrigerator, just in case, sent the digital files to the editor ( As TIFF I must add) and was never asked again to supply film stock.
Don’t miss it one bit.
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Interesting post David, but a bit over my head and again so glad I am in the digital age 😊
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Awww. And I thought I made it super simple. :-).
I think I went 15 years thinking the little instruction leaflet in the film box was good enough. I did graduate to a Weston Lightmeter and have used one since. There is a photo somewhere online of St Ansel with a Weston around his neck.
Think I might blog it next week 🙂
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Thanks David for such an interesting and comprehensive explanation of this “analogue” topic. I wish I could read it many years ago when I was experimenting with my first photography attempts. On the other hand, I’m not so sure I would be able to implement all this insightful information while working with my first camera – made in USSR – f 5.6-11 and amazing shutter speed of 1/125 sec. Still, I had lots of fun in the darkroom trying to fix the unfixable, discovering solarisation and changing black and white prints into pink and creamy ones. Now, thanks to you, I’ve discovered a new feature in my Nick Silver Efex – something to play with on the dark and gloomy days. You are a real treasure of photographic knowledge, David and you also know how to share it. Respect!
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G’day Adam,
it was many years before I really spent the time to grasp what St Ansel was on about. And by then, like you and your rather cute little camera, (Was it a Lubbitel?) I’d already established a solid working method of my own. (Didn’t even know it was a Work Flow!)
I had the good fortune to work for a time with a Pro B&W printer who had a motto “If the quality is not good enough to hang on my wall, its not good enough for a customer”, and into the bin the print would go and he’d head back to make another.
I also have to say its rare that I do a colour to mono digital conversion. I rather enjoy going out with the camera set to Mono (JPEG) and working in mono thought process. Some might say it matches my mood 🙂
But I do like SfeX for the range of colour filters I can apply to move the tones about. Interestingly I think Lightroom is now catching up with that. i know you are settled on DxO but I’ve not worked with it for awhile, but no doubt it can do similar things.
What ever tool matches the vision is the right one, and for St Ansel the zones worked. The day I can print like The Moon Rising over St Hernadez, would be nirvanah.
Here is a Wiki link to that pic, and a good read on the way he (they) made it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonrise,_Hernandez,_New_Mexico
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That’s a fascinating story about The Moon Rising over St. Hernandez shot. Thank you for the link. David. My first camera was Smena, licensed by LOMO to the USSR manufacturer. Fully manual! I remember particularly well taking double exposure shots (I could rewind the film back) at a deserted cemetery in California in the summer of 1972…
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Well….. I’ll read this post again when I’m not feeling quite so tired, but I have a horrible feeling that I’ll get the same result: total and utter confusion…!!! :-))
I have learnt that if you set the Light Meter for a photo of a subject that is close by and that subject has a lot of black or white on it, then you’ll get a disappointing result. Or if you set the Light Meter for a subject that is close by and then try to take a photo of – say – a Mute Swan that’s some distance away, then once again: the results will also be disappointing.
And so, just to be on the safe side, and regardless of how close or how distant as Subject is, I’ll take three or four photos, using different Light Meter readings, and I can be reasonably certain that at least one of the shots will be at least reasonably satisfactory…!
BUT: I have no idea if this was what St Ansel – or you – were (or are) on about, and so I will endeavour to read this Blog again tomorrow when my eyes are not struggling to stay open – but as mentioned above: I’m not sure I’ll be able to make any more sense out of it, so don’t hold your breath…!!! :-))
However, your masthead photo (above) of the Kite(?) is superb. In selecting your camera settings for this shot, you have obviously allowed for sunlight on the bird’s body, and shadow on the wing, resulting in a fabulous photo. I may never reach the standard that you have reached (and I’m quite comfortable about that), but I’m having a heck of a lot of fun trying. So, thanks for your regular offerings, and know that whilst I may never mention it, I am learning a lot from you…! And who knows? I might even learn something off St Ansel when I read about him tomorrow…!!! In the meantime: have a nice evening…!!!
Lance
Wellington NZ
A Non-tech Head DSLR User Who Doesn’t Always Read Instructions
And
Who Doesn’t Mind What Ms Swift Thinks Of DSLR Cameras
PS… Be encouraged: in spite of the lateness of the hour (It’s now 10.40pm), and in spite of my not calling it a day until 1:30am this morning, I’ve already had a second reading of your writings, and both your thoughts (above) and St Ansel’s are – to my surprise – already making a lot more sense than the first time round, so who knows what pearls of wisdom I’ll glean tomorrow…!!! :-))
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Hi Lance, thanks for the well reasoned response.
I wrote it with a touch of the larrikan anyway. Some points that are important to note.
—”So for the Non-tech heads—Click away now. Nothing to see here!”
—”the majority of the blog is a tad (ok a great big bulge) Tongue in Cheek”
—”What does all this have to do with Digital Photography.
Memo: Absolutely Nuthin!”
—Exposure meters, and in-camera meters will try an interpret the amount of light available to match a mid-tone grey value (Zone V)
You are correct The Mute swan would appear grey if we metered only the swan’s feathers. Similarly my old friend, “Blackie the cat” would be a grey if we metered only the cat.
These days on the camera review sceen it is possible to show a Histogram of the picture. This is a represenation of the brightness values of the scene.
We try to keep the dark parts from blocking up on the left side, (Value of 0) and from burning out on the right side of the graph, (Value 255) The little historgram representation is from a JPEG thumbnail the camera makes, not the raw image. Which depending on the setting may contain 4096 range of values, but. and it’s a big BUT, that is another story entirely.
End of the day, we pay a lot of money for camera technology. It’s to the manufactuer’s benefit that when you point the camera at something, the little St Ansel gnome inside the camera works out what setting is going to look good. Else we’d all be complaining that. ” the results from my SoNikCan camera XTYIII Super Ultra is no good and people shouldn’t buy that camera”.
It’s about the same as the little filum leaflet with the setting instructions that we all used to throw away as we loaded up the filum. Funnily enough for most people and their average pictures the results were pretty good. And Mum’s old Box camera had a fixed shutter speed of about 1/25th of a second and an aperture of perhaps f/11 Mind the film speed in ISO in those days would have been lucky to be ISO40
TImes have changed. For the better Taylor Swift not withstanding.
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