Re: shadow density in zone III

Hello List, I am a lurker named Dennis and this is my first post,

This zone system discussion has been interesting and my experience with
it was being taught in 1974 by Glen Fishback who wrote the original
handbook for the Pentax spot meter and modified the AA zone system by
reducing the number of zones to be concerned with. It is the only
system of exposure calculation I have ever used though it has become
simplified to squinting my eyes to find the darks in previsualization
and metering to make sure I get enough exposure there. Then reading
the whites that I want detail in and considering how much of a problem
it will be to print it.

The thing that has frustrated me with silver paper is that since the
improvement of AGFA in the early 80s I have never been satisfied with
the quality or character of silver gel printing even with the
chlorobromides. To this day I seem forced to make prints very
contrasty with deep blacks to get the paper to look it's best and long
scale prints are always rather flat and ugly.. I know there are people
who have figured out how to make beautiful long scale silver prints but
in general it is too frustrating for me. I think the thing that annoys
me most is the brightened paper.

Which brings me to my question. I notice that all the zone system talk
here references silver paper. Considering this is an alt list, has
anyone figured out what are the best low end densities to print with
great detail on a platinum print? PL/PT is my printing method since
the 80s and the precision of my metering/processing technique has bee
reduced to "give it a hell of a lot of exposure and processing" so that
I can print to black without using a lot of inhibiter. What is the
ideal negative density for Zone 2 and zone 9 in pl/pd printing.

thanks

On Thursday, Sep 29, 2005, at 07:59 US/Pacific, Shannon Stoney wrote:

> 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 09:41:48 2005