The zone system - my first silly question

[Lesley Jones]

I think that's what it's called. I came from a place with some VERY good photographers and metering for zone 4 or zone 6 seems to be the in thing. First of all, can I assume this whole idea started a long time ago - possibly with Ansel Adams? If it is the same as the zones from 0 to 10 that I see when using Silver FX to convert, then I get the basics. 0 is blocked and 10 is blown. Fine.

A one degree spot meter - I'm not so sure about this one. I have a choice of metering on my camera and I would only use the spot meter if I had a model in an odd lighting situation and getting her skin right was the most important thing. Are these spot meters on the top end cameras, or are we talking about a different piece of kit?

Now comes the really silly part. Ignoring studio lighting (of which I am totally ignorant), outside you only have the light that is there. For the moment I will ignore the soft muted kind and go for a sunset on a beach. So our eyes can take in the colours of the sky and the detail of the rocks at our feet in shadow. A digital camera can't, so you have to choose which bit is most important. Either that, or try and pull what detail you can from one exposure, or somehow blend multiple exposures.

Seeing as we have some flexibility here and of course, you can play with the levels and darken shadows, brighten highlights and drag the mid tones up and down... what is the point of such accurate metering? I've done the beach thing and even three exposures, two stops apart, don't quite capture all the detail without a bit more fiddling. I check the histogram at the scene and decide which bracketed set gives me the best options.

I've either misunderstood, or I just don't get it

 

[Pete Askew]

No, you haven't misunderstood and the Zone System is still relevant to digital imaging but it was developed by Adams et al to help achieve the print that you pre-visualised from a negative at the time of shooting. Part of the system is the concept of altering development etc to achieve this. The spot meter (either built in or purchased) allows you to analyse the scene before you so you know which area you want to place in which zone to capture the range of tones you want.

Accurate metering is still important to optimise the detail captured in shadows in particular. With raw capture the concept is very similar except you are developing it digitally later.

There's some useful articles here.

Expose Right

Determining Exposure

 

[Lesley Jones]

Thanks Pete. I'm not very good with articles. I mean... I've used the LL site before, but after a few technical bits I tend to glaze over and give up. I'm permanently exhausted looking after the zoo and I don't have the free time to wade through all the information.

I think I get it and yet I don't. You either capture all detail possible and stick the tones where you wish afterwards, or you let some go and expose for the important bits. I don't think when I take photographs at all - letting my brain interfere would just be a recipe for disaster. Somehow I can't picture myself standing in a landscape saying "I think I will expose that rock for zone 5". Maybe it's because I don't print. I couldn't afford to and we don't have the wall space anyway. (It's a very old house and walls are either slanting or wood-panelled and falling apart at the seams).

I have certainly read about exposing to the right, which as someone who used to shoot a lot of colour slides is rather difficult to do

 

[Pete Askew]

I know the conflict that you mean. Coming from film and especially slides, it does seem counter intuitive but it's all to do with the amount of information carried by the various tones and minimising noise. So if you can expose a scene with your histogram to the right without clipping highlights too much (there is often something on one of the colour channels even so) then you maximise the amount of detail you can retain in shadows. When you develop the fie in a raw converter / LR you can decrease the exposure to give you shadow density etc that you wanted.

 

[Lesley Jones]

I think I'm finding that anyway. I often shoot in low light, so the image ends up lighter than it really was due to the meter doing its average grey thing. I hate looking at it when it first opens in RAW, but it doesn't take long to improve things.

I do have some questions about Lightroom, but perhaps I should leave that for another weekend

 

[alfie Wright]

Hmmm... This is very interesting to a newbie who has just recently been reading about the Adams/Archer zone system.

If the "in thing" is to meter for zones 4 or 6 does this mean we are trying to under or overexpose by +/- one stop for effect? or by this do we mean to meter from zones 4 or 6 & then compensate by +/- one stop to balance the exposure?

Exposing to the right seems to make alot of sense, after reading a little on how modern sensors work. It seems very hard to do in practice without blowing the highlights though. It also seems counter intuitive to be trying to slighty overexpose all your images out of the camera, so they all need more PP to get back a correct exposure, but with the benefit of more detail & less noise.

 

[Hamish Gill]

I cant see how I could possibly categorise this as a silly question ...

 

[Lesley Jones]

Alfie,

I'm afraid I was only using the numbers 4 and 6 to make a general point. I actually can't recall what number was being discussed. Sorry if I led you astray!

 

[alfie Wright]

Hi Lesley,

No worries. I'm a bit like a sponge atm just soaking up as much info as I can & then trying to remember to put some of the learned stuff into practice while shooting. I suspect metering for zone 6 & not correcting with exposure compensation may just give that right sided histogram that seems to be being talked about as the way to go. I'm still trying to to get "correct" exposures straight out of the camera atm anyway & am always a little disappointed when they're slightly overexposed even though when worked back in PP may well end up better images. I suspect it boils down to how much PP one wants to do to how you expose your image in camera.

Some interesting reading anyway & the fact that it makes me think a little more about the shots I'm trying to capture has got to be good!

 

[Paul Lange]

I have just the thing for you, have a look here - Exposure

It lives on the forum as well I think but I couldn't find it.

 

[Paul Lange]

In a nutshell you pre-visualise your image. It is useful if you have a scene with an extreme difference in levels between highlights and shadows. You have to make the decision as to whether you want the brightest of the highlight areas to have detail or to be blown out. For example you may want some glare from the sun to be overexposed but some white walls to have some detail and be properly exposed. In this case you increase your +EV by 2 stops and spot meter the white walls. Use your AE-L button to lock the exposure, recompose your image and take the photo. This should sort out the the highlights in your photograph but you will find the shadows to be too dark. You adjust the RAW image with some fill light or a boost in shadows to bring back some detail in these.

You might find some digital cameras don't have enough dynamic range and the highlights where you wanted to retain detail are overexposed. In this case adjust the +EV down a bit to +1.7 or 1.3. Alternatively you can switch on your high dynamic range setting on your camera a cheat. On Nikons it's called ADL, other makes also have it but it's called something else.

This is the system modified for digital, it doesn't work for film by the way.