Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/12/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]sometime around 12/13/99 11:59 AM, Martin Howard at howard.390@osu.edu was heard to write: > Yeah, but the zone scale is based upon perception, right? Zone VI is > supposed to be twice as light as Zone V, and Zone IV is half as bright > as Zone V. > > I don't get the point of thinking in zones, if the zones aren't always the > same. Nope. Photography doesn't work that way. And it's not based on perception, that's about the least realiable way to do sensitometry. That's why they make densitometers. :-) The point is that Zone VI reflects about twice the light as Zone V according to your meter, but the tone on the print won't refect twice the light. That's why the charts have curves, not straight lines. This is basic Zone system stuff. Have you ever read Ansel Adams' books? Forget about the rest of the pretenders out there. Phil Davis' "Beyond the Zone System" tries to calibrate the paper so that you can hold up some gray scale against a subject and decide what tone somethig should have. For me that's way too anal retentive, and I bet Ansel would say the same thing. The Zone system is a calibration of your process and equipment. - -- Eric Welch Carlsbad, CA http://www.neteze.com/ewelch Zen master to hotdog vendor. "Make me one with everything."