Re: zone system and large format film

As you know, the Zone system rule is: Meter for the shadows and print for
the highlights.

The key and unfortunately the answer to your question is "Test." Take a
gray card, or as I do a collage with aluminum foil and slate gray rock, with
a cement gray brick and form the Roman numeral V, expose normal, the make
the 'set up' read IV, and under expose one stop; following toward over
exposure with the set up to read VI, VII, etc. and then process all the same
developer, the same times.

You will SEE the answer. Better! You will KNOW what to do.

The last workshop I did with Al Weber answered exactly that question.
Answer: While most people think they have to sacrifice shadow detail for
highlight tonality, setting the meter on Zone VIII will render plenty of
highlight detail. In fact Zone IX is not devoid of detail!

My experience shows that if the negative has ANY information in the D-Min,
you can print shadow detial by splint printing: Determine the time for an
acceptable print. Print the highest grade acceptable for 2/3 the time found
in that first print. Then Expose the paper the final 1/3 of the time with a
lower grade filter and that will 'matt out' the dark tones into the smallest
steps of gray to black and give you detail in the shadow areas. But, you
can't put detail in a pure blank negative, there has to be some image on
that negative.

Let me know
Steve Shapiro
sgshiya@redshift.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christina Z. Anderson" <zphoto@montana.net>
To: "Alt list" <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 5:17 PM
Subject: zone system and large format film

> Well, I'm getting up my nerve to ask a sort of non alt question--but at
> least it does deal with large negatives!
>
> When you all are out in the field, do you generally place your shadows on
> Zone III and highlights on Zone VII or Zone VIII?? What happened in
> between Adams' zone system and Carson Graves et al? It seems that people
> have migrated to a Zone VII highlight, and contracted the zones to fewer.
> Minor White in his book from the 60's says that paper changed and got more
> compressed and that is why the change. Is this true? Techiegeeks,
> PLEASE enlighten me, especially those who used papers from early on
> (30's-60's) until now....Condenser enlargers, VC paper, #2 filter as
> normal.
> Chris
>
>
>
Received on Wed Sep 28 20:04:16 2005