Re: shadow density in zone III

Some thoughts:

The zone system is all about (or should be about) matching your film,
scene contrast, film development and printing system. That way you have
less to "worry about" while shooting and more brain cells to actually
"look" at the scene and compose :-)

We alt printers get a MUCH tougher variable in the "printing system"
part of that sentence. The classic AA zone descriptions don't fit most
alt processes well. Generally the middle AA descriptions (zones 3 to
zone 7) transfer to alt. The extremes of AA's descriptions (Zones
0,1,2,8,9,10) vary depending of the alt process/paper/style.

For ME with MY paper and MY chemistry: Cyanotype loses the extremes. I
fall from zone 3 (well detailed dark tones) into featureless dark very
quickly. With in camera film, that is just a "fact of life" with MY
materials. AA's zones 0,1 and 2 are really "incorrect" for ME and MY
version of Cyanotype. Alt doesn't always "take away" from the AA
descriptions, in platinum I get a wonderful extended set of closely
placed high zones.

Find ONE "thinking/testing/visual" version of the zone system and do
the work. You will need to do it for each process / paper combo :-(

As an example of why I capitalized ONE above: Many years ago I had a
long zone system discussion (I "think" here ?maybe? with Kerik) and it
was quite confusing. The other fellow and I were using the same film
and similar development and had both done real testing. But he insisted
with this film you needed to put shadows on zone 4, I had real good
luck using zone 3 or even 2 (if I wanted dark shadows). Turns out I was
shooting the film at EI 125 and he was shooting the same film at EI
320. Our shadow density "on film" was identical. Only our "system" and
"words" were different.

Digital negs certainly simplify much of this!

You can read (perhaps more than you want) about my in camera film/zone
system for alt here:
http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com/alternative/index.html

Tom
Received on Fri Sep 30 18:45:56 2005