shadow density in zone III

I just realized that I have another burning question about the zone
system and zone III: what density is zone III in your negatives?

For a long time I have been following Dick Arentz's suggestion that
the density of zone III should be about .35-.4. But, as somebody
mentioned earlier, very dense negatives can also make good prints,
sometimes very good prints. If I raised the density of my shadows
to, say, .70, then the highlights would have to be about 1.7, and so
on. I have printed negatives like this and they look good. In fact
it seems that the roll films that I have tested, if you shoot them at
their rated speed and develop them at their recommended times, make
denser negatives like that. Maybe that's to prevent people from
underexposing their film. (But I normally shoot HP5+ in my old
Rollei at 1600, in order to get the shadow densities down to .35 or
.4.)

Just curious: those people on this list that use densitometers to
measure their shadow densities: what is your "goal" for your
shadows? And what is the rationale behind that? Does it really
matter what the density of the shadows is, as long as the highlights
fall in the right place relative to the shadows? Maybe that .35-.40
thing is completely arbitrary? And if there was a reason behind it,
what is it?

--shannon
Received on Thu Sep 29 08:58:01 2005