Hi all,

"Coming to my final Ansal Adams question - please please don't make me read articles on this Saturday :-) Just tell me the answer ... Would he ??"

Loaded question. Ansel invented the 'zone', and had more than a particular fondness, but he would use digital cameras and Photoshop (or similar), so he likely would have 'recreated' the zone to make it fit.

My best,

Mike

When I want good results, I still use manual control over the camera (Speed/Aperture and sometimes also Focus).

Using the Zone System to get an educated light measurement helps a lot before pointing your camera and taking a test photo... and then when you look on the histogram, you find out that you are almost there... give you some satisfaction that you are doing the correct stuff.

I don't need to convince you, that under difficult light conditions, this system can help a lot. It can make the difference between a mediocre automatic photo than one you tailored and would say WOW!, just by tweaking the exposure settings used.

Testing123 said:
capture:

When I said "expose for the shadows" I didn't mean preventing overexposure of them, but rather purposefully overexposing highlights so that the shadow detail could be brought to light.

I did not mean that either - I was not referring to what you said in your previous post( missed that part ). I misstated it but it was more like " there is always some part in shadows needing more exposure so you can't have overexposed shadows anyway if you shoot for highlights".

I do understand what you mean by going for the "highest level of clipping tolerable" , but I rarely find it usable in digital photography as I find the tolerable limit is no more than 1/2 stop most of the time. ( And I don't have access to a program that I can "sectionally 7 selectively " decrease highlights in a photo )

Coming to my final Ansal Adams question - please please don't make me read articles on this Saturday :-) Just tell me the answer ... Would he ??

We're mostly on the same page, Paperman but let me clarify my position a bit:

Paperman said:
Shooting mainly landscpaes ,my main worry in getting the correct exposure is not to blow the highlights and I get optimum results 95% of the time - if I just stay a tiny tod under the highlights blow limit .

Right, IMHO there are only two "proper" exposures for digital capture:
1 - Max exposure w/o clipping. Or
2 - Highest level of clipping you can tolerate (what I called exposing for the shadows).

Once you get back home you can adjust exposure DOWN all you want, but you'll never gain back lost highlights.

The dynamic range is so little anyway that shadows most of the time need all the light they can get so I rarely have to worry about overexposing the shadows - when my histogram is barely touching the right side.

When I said "expose for the shadows" I didn't mean preventing overexposure of them, but rather purposefully overexposing highlights so that the shadow detail could be brought to light.

Maybe I can rephrase the question as - would Ansel Adams use the zone system if he had access to histograms/ blinking highlights ?

This question is perfectly timed, IMHO, because I think Thom Hogan's front-page photo is a perfect example of the modern evolution of the zone philosophy.*

Yes, I purposefully call it the zone philosophy, not system, in today's digital age.

Being an exposure freak, I don't know how I ever survived the film times without ever getting involved with the zone system. In the last few years, I attempted a few times to see if it would be of any use in the digital age but it didn't take me long to decide not to spend time on it .

I understand the OP's desire to educate her daughter in photography in firm grounds as we learned it 20-30 years ago but my question is - is knowing the zone system really necessary in the digital age ?

Shooting mainly landscpaes ,my main worry in getting the correct exposure is not to blow the highlights and I get optimum results 95% of the time - if I just stay a tiny tod under the highlights blow limit . The dynamic range is so little anyway that shadows most of the time need all the light they can get so I rarely have to worry about overexposing the shadows - when my histogram is barely touching the right side.

The difference between blowing and not blowing a highlight can be as low as 1/3 stops on my D300 and I know that there is no getting the details back if I blow them by more than 1/2 stop.

That being the case , can the zone system created 40 years ago for the more tolerable films ( in which highlights won't blow even with 1-2 stop overexposures ) still be valid in digital age when losing highlight details can be determined by 1/3 to 1/2 stops ? Even if it is , is it worth spending time on it when histograms & blinking highlights provide all the necessary information for us .

Maybe I can rephrase the question as - would Ansel Adams use the zone system if he had access to histograms/ blinking highlights ?

I'm curious to know ...

Not to derail the original question (as I have no books to recommend), but the way I was taught was that one doesn't "shoot the zone system" so much as one shoots with awareness of the zone system.

One prints the zone system.

The dynamic range of one's capture medium, be it film or digital, is fixed. What is not fixed is how one translates that (limited) range of values onto paper. One can do a linear translation (producing something with the same values as a contact print, in effect the same values as the negative) or one can expand, compress, translate, and distort those values.

Cue the tomatoes, but I really believe the modern-day analog of zone developing and printing is a deep understanding of layers work in Photoshop, combined with enough understanding of digital sensor technology to understand the hows and whys of a Uni-WB workflow.

Digital capture pretty much forces one to expose for the highlights OR for the shadows, forcing even more of the zone philosophy into the post-process than ever before.

TL;DR? Search for "Zone System Photoshop" instead of "Zone System Digital Camera".

rbid said:
That is the reason I posted here, to get advice from people who has the books and can advice which one to pick or which one to avoid.

Please do not misunderstand me. I appreciate very much your help, and I guess other users reading this thread will learn from your explanation.

No problem. No, I don't have any first-hand recommendations. If you find a good title, please post it here.

bjrichus said:
My 1.5c worth is that Google is your search friend...

True, I have searched before posting, and got a large list of results.. therefore, I wanted an educated advice from the forum members, that have the books and can advice.

bjrichus said:

Did you also see the 4 page summary on outdoorphotographer dot com and all the other blog discussions out there?

It's not about gear... its about how you use it.

Now will take a look on the site you mention, thanks for the link :)

studio460 said:
The Zone System for Digital Photography:

While the Zone System was originally developed for film photography, its basic concepts are certainly applicable to digital photography as well. Just knowing that when you take a "spot meter" reading (or, an incident reading), that you're referencing the middle of the characteristic curve (e.g., "Zone V") is an important concept from which beginners would benefit. In other words, just knowing that the meter isn't necessarily indicating a "correct" exposure, and that it's simply indicating what's "in the middle," is a valuable lesson (in fact, using an incident reading to meter a caucasian face, results in underexposure by definition).

As you probably already know, the Zone System was basically a system which correlated under- or over-exposure in the negative, with under- or over-development in the film processing stage, to achieve the desired tonal range in the final negative (i.e., typically, to achieve the maximum recordable dynamic range).

This goal is the same in digital photography: to maximize the dynamic range of your particular scene within the constraints of the characteristic curve of a given sensor in a DSLR. Similar conceptually (though not similar literally and technically), some analogies can be made between adjusting "curves," black levels, and white levels in Photoshop, to the chemical under-/over-development process.

There are a few notable differences:

1. Digital sensors have less dynamic range than film negatives.
2. Digital sensors tend to lose highlight detail much faster than film negatives (the common comparison is to reversal films).

If nothing else, the Zone System can teach valuable lessons in the "sensitometry" of any recording medium. Learning the language of the characteristic curve would assist any beginning photographer in making the most of his/her chosen medium. Understanding "toe," "shoulder," and "slope," give modern terms like "black stretch," "knee," and "gamma," context, and also assist the beginning photographer's understanding of what various adjustments in Photoshop are really doing.

Type the terms, "Zone System digital photography," in Amazon, and a number of relevant titles appear.

Thanks for the detailed explanation... You don't need to convince me, I used this system in my film era with B&W film to get excelent results :)

Now I'm looking for books that will trigger in my daughter the passion for learning and using this system with a DSLR.

Before posting in this forum, I have searched also in Google, also in Amazon (and also in other book shops that I don't want to mention to prevent being banned over here), and the list is not short.. but from experience, most of the books are mediocre books and not the ones that really can push somebody to learn and use this system. That is the reason I posted here, to get advice from people who has the books and can advice which one to pick or which one to avoid.

Please do not miss-understand me. I appreciate very much your help, and I guess other users reading this thread will learn from your explanation.

The Zone System for Digital Photography:

While the Zone System was originally developed for film photography, its basic concepts are certainly applicable to digital photography as well. Just knowing that when you take a "spot meter" reading (or, an incident reading), that you're referencing the middle of the characteristic curve (e.g., "Zone V") is an important concept from which beginners would benefit. In other words, just knowing that the meter isn't necessarily indicating a "correct" exposure, and that it's simply indicating what's "in the middle," is a valuable lesson (in fact, using an incident reading to meter a caucasian face, results in underexposure by definition).

As you probably already know, the Zone System was basically a system which correlated under- or over-exposure in the negative, with under- or over-development in the film processing stage, to achieve the desired tonal range in the final negative (i.e., typically, to achieve the maximum recordable dynamic range).

This goal is the same in digital photography: to maximize the dynamic range of your particular scene within the constraints of the characteristic curve of a given sensor in a DSLR. Similar conceptually (though not similar literally and technically), some analogies can be made between adjusting "curves," black levels, and white levels in Photoshop, to the chemical under-/over-development process.

There are a few notable differences:

1. Digital sensors have less dynamic range than film negatives.
2. Digital sensors tend to lose highlight detail much faster than film negatives (the common comparison is to reversal films).

If nothing else, the Zone System can teach valuable lessons in the "sensitometry" of any recording medium. Learning the language of the characteristic curve would assist any beginning photographer in making the most of his/her chosen medium. Understanding "toe," "shoulder," and "slope," give modern terms like "black stretch," "knee," and "gamma," context, and also assist the beginning photographer's understanding of what various adjustments in Photoshop are really doing.

Type the terms, "Zone System digital photography," in Amazon, and a number of relevant titles appear.

@rbid...

My 1.5c worth is that Google is your search friend...

Did you also see the 4 page summary on outdoorphotographer dot com and all the other blog discussions out there?

As for books describing it in relation to Nikon... I don't think there is any point in such a thing, as with the zone system, you'll get results no matter what brand of gear is involved.

It's not about gear... its about how you use it.

Hello,

Now playing with my D7000 and want also to impulse my daughter to learn about the Zone System. (She has a D40 and she is making big steps into the world of photography)

I'm not looking for the three books of Ansel Adams, that are more tailored to film..

Do you have any advice? She is traveling next month to the States and I would like to give her an surprise with the books.

Again, the focus should be in techniques using the zone system with Nikon DSLR.

Have a nice day.. and hope the best for the Japanese people.