Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/28
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on 27/2/00 9:55 pm, Timothy R. Kuntz at covbldrs@usit.net wrote:
> I'm curious, among this group, who uses the zone system of
> exposure/development/printing? Either formally or informally, color or b&w.
>
> Which spotmeters are good - accurate, rugged, easy to use, reliable?
Like a lot of people here, I guess I have internalized the ZS. Most of the
time I just incident meter and maybe tweak dev times to N+1 or N-1 if the
light is flat or harsh. If something is critical or difficult, I will take
care to place shadows on Zone III (if using b/w) and figure out the
development from where the highlights fall. With reversal, I just meter
highlights and let the rest fall where it may.
In crazy difficult light I will use a compensating developer like D23 or one
of my bastardised two-bath process (more to come on pseudo split Xtol, btw),
making sure that I get shadow detail, which I'm nuts about.
The ZS is one of those things, like scales in music, that once you've
learned, you can often kind of forget about... and yet you're using it the
whole time without thinking about it.
- --
John Brownlow
photos: http://www.pinkheadedbug.com
music: http://www.jukebox.demon.co.uk