Re: zone system and large format film

Chris wrote:

> 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.

Well, I haven't been around long enough to use papers from the '30s, '40s,
or '50s, but I'll take a stab anyway. Zones are supposed to be PRINT
values. The whole point of the Zone System is to MAP subject luminances
through the camera, negative, and printing process to the desired PRINT
values (zones). So, if there has been a change in "real" zones it would
only be because modern papers have a different Dmin and Dmax compared to
older papers. And they don't. What they do have, in some cases, are
different H&D curves (log exposure vs. log density) from older papers.
This does *not* affect "real" zones -- the things Ansel Adams meant by
"zones" -- the print density values. Simply put, you expose and develop to
get the important values to fall where you want them with a straight print,
then you dodge and burn (and these days, use different VC filters) and
bleach and intensify to get the rest of the values where you want them.
Generally, but not always, you choose the two limits -- the luminance
values that you want to have texture in the shadows and highlights -- and
let everything else fall where it will in between, satisfied that all of
the important scene luminances will be mapped onto "useful" portions of the
print value scale. Choice of film, paper, and to a much lesser extent,
developer, allows one to tweak the mid zones around by using the different
H&D curves available. (For the advanced worker, non-proportional reducers
and intensifiers are additional tools for this purpose.)

Sadly, partly because of a lack of understanding (Minor White appears to
have been the first of many to not quite "get" it), and partly because
others have thought they saw a better way, the term "zone" has been applied
to the values at every stage of the process -- scene luminance values,
negative density values, print exposure scales, and print density values.
[St. Ansel is not entirely blameless here -- he let his wording get sloppy
at times.] One rather well-known photo educator even developed a "zone
system" for incident light metering -- the very anthesis of mapping
specific scene luminances to print density values! (Not to say that the
system doesn't work -- it's just not the zone system.) So nowadays, many
zonies talk past each other because a "zone" is this amorphous thing.

My advice: either (1) delve deep into sensitometry until you understand the
mapping inside and out, in which case you will rise to a level of
sensitometric enlightenment above the zone system (this is really not that
hard); or (2) expose plenty to get the darkest textured shadows you care
about up off the toe of the film's H&D curve, and develop so that the
brightest textured highlight is still on the linear part (or just into the
shoulder) of the film's curve. The latter, simple approach will give you
somewhat dense but beautifully detailed negatives that are generally easy
to print. When you get the hang of it, you can adjust development so that
the highlights are at just the right density so that the negatives have
exactly the right density range for your printing process. (This assumes
that your film will develop sufficient density for your process. Some
films -- notably HP5+ -- have difficulty reaching sufficient highlight
density for the low-contrast alt processes [salted paper, cyano, plain Pt,
etc.]). And lo and behold, you will have "backed into" the zone system
with hardly any effort!

I have found over many years of experience that "bulletproof" negatives --
ones with a high density range, though with highlights that are not blocked
-- make the best prints (where "best" is defined as achieving good
separation of all tonal values and smooth tonal gradations). In other
words, make somewhat hard and dense negatives and learn to love Grade -1,
0, 1, and 1-1/2 paper. An added side benefit is that one's negatives will
come much closer to suiting both silver-gelatin and alt processes.

Best regards,

etienne
Received on Thu Sep 29 00:39:12 2005