From: Shannon Stoney (shannonstoney@earthlink.net)
Date: 07/18/01-02:38:47 PM Z
When I was learning the zone system for silver printing, I learned to figure
out if I was looking at a "normal" scene by measuring the shadow area (zone
III) and the meaningful highlight area, hopefully in zone VII. If the
meaningful highlights fell in zone VII, I considered it a normal negative.
But now, after reading Dick Arentz's book on pt/pd printing, I am wondering
if my old method still holds for alt-process negatives. He writes,
"Manufacturers of photographic film have determined that the brightness
range of a typical outdoor scene is seven stops." And he has a little bar
graph that shows these seven stops ranging from zone II to zone IX. Does
this mean that manufactureres of photographic film are metering the sky
too, when they look at a typical outdoor scene?
On another page he writes, "in calculating negative values with a
transmission densitometer, both the useful highlight (Zone VIII) and the
useful shadow densities (Zone III) are measured. After simple substraction,
the difference is determined...this is the density range of the negative."
So, do you take this to mean that when metering a typical outdoor scene to
determine if it is normal or not, one meters everything including the sky to
see if it is seven stops; or does it mean that you only meter zones III
through VIII? And if your meaningful highlights fall in zone VIII, it is a
normal scene? (By my old system, it would be a N-1 scene.)
--shannon stoney
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