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Zone Matching is Amazing! (but did I set it properly?)

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Photos-Mike

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I was out today doing some testing connected with Craig's exposure thread:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1035&message=14835866
and I decided to test zone matching.

I found that it worked very, very well.

One thing, though is that I was under the impression that ZM always sets the ISO to 250. This did not happen, and I even thought that perhaps I had not dialled in ZM correctly, so I tested it at home and once again the ISO did not change. It says Zone and Low on the LCD, but it takes shots at ISO 100 in my case.

It was late afternoon, about 45 minutes before sunset. It was still quite light, but there were some forest areas that were very dark, and I used those for my tests.

I used aperture mode, hand-held, no bias, auto WB, and ZM low. The lens was a 35mm f1.4G. These are RAW images, converted to JPG with NO adjustments whatsoever.

f/1.4, 1/8th sec:



It was dark in there! I couldn't make out much detail with my eyes.

In this one, the sun was in the background, not really what ZM is for, but the foreground was very dark. f/3.2, 1/6th sec:



And in this one, it was REALLY dark, I was sure the camera wouldn't be able to focus. f1.4, 1/5th sec (you can see by the aperture and speed how dark it was):



I also took this one using ZM. I should have turned it off and taken another one to compare. f3.2, 1/30th sec:



Needless to say, AS rocks! But I would say that ZM rocks too! It must be the most under-marketed great feature of this camera.

I'd be interested in feedback, especially on the ISO issue. Maybe I was not in ZM? Either way, the 7D manages to nail exposure in an astounding manner - Craig, what do you think?

--
Mike
http://mikekatz.smugmug.com
 
IIRC ZM-Lo is @ ISO 100

ZM-Hi is the one that nominally sets ISO=250 :)
--
Bernard

AS rocks!
lens reviews and more on dyxum.com!
 
They look pretty good exposure wise. I have never used ZOne Matching, not least because many people had stated that the RAW files were uneffected by NM, and only the jpgs got the benefit?

I'll post some of the jpegs from my scotland photos too, as lookign at them yesterday, they looked less problematic. WHat I wonder is if the image displayed on the screen after the shot is taken just look much darker than the full jpgs? Anyway, I'll post some here tonight and see what the general opinion is. I suspect to a large degree I am wantin gto get too much 'pre post-process'. I'm competent in CS2 so the processing isn't a problem. RSE rocks by the way, though the jury is out on it's comparison to C1Pro :-)

Cheers!
--
Craig A Clark
Ark VFX LTD ~ Lydgate Lane ~ Sheffield ~ UK
http://www.arkvfx.net/
http://www.f-nine.co.uk/
http://www.pbase.com/caclark/
 
I have the D5 so it may not be the same as the 7D but when viewing the LCD postshot, the viewing angle s quite critical because like some flat computer screens the intensity of the image changes with angle. I find that it is optimised for viewing with the camera tilted slightly at the top away from you.

Keith-C
 
CAClark said:
They look pretty good exposure wise. I have never used ZOne
Matching, not least because many people had stated that the RAW
files were uneffected by NM, and only the jpgs got the benefit?
Click to expand...
Definitely works for RAW. I took a test shot with and without ZM, and it to shift the histogram to the centre in an organised manner.

Did you see the non-ZM samples I posted in your exposures thread? I have you to thank for my ZM revelations - they were an add-on to testing how exposure was working for me relative to what you were saying.
CAClark said:
I'll post some of the jpegs from my scotland photos too, as lookign
at them yesterday, they looked less problematic. WHat I wonder is
if the image displayed on the screen after the shot is taken just
look much darker than the full jpgs? Anyway, I'll post some here
tonight and see what the general opinion is. I suspect to a large
degree I am wantin gto get too much 'pre post-process'. I'm
competent in CS2 so the processing isn't a problem. RSE rocks by
the way, though the jury is out on it's comparison to C1Pro :-)
Click to expand...
I use RSE. I tried to evaluate C1Pro, but it decided my evaluation time was up before I even started. I'm waiting for the commercial version of RSE before I look further. I need to be able to crop in RSE. The auto exposure tool is awesome, but if I can crop first and eliminate extraneous highlight or lowlight areas it would be even better. Also the noise, sharpening, and saturation tools in Paint Shop Pro are better than RSE's at present.

--
Mike
http://mikekatz.smugmug.com
 
I shot some with ZM when I first got my camera, but was under the same impression as Craig, that it only really affected Jpegs. I will have to go out and do some testing again myself.

Thanks for the input.
--
Cheerio...
Rich
 
Indeed, ZM is a less talk feature but it does work. Thanks for the post.

Cheers,
Tom
 
I think Minolta were crazy to hide this feature the way they did. If you are wanting to use ZM, you are also wanting to change normal ISO, and you can't do oth at the same time without changing a menu option. I've now used two of my custom settings for LOW / HIGH ZM.

With the 5D, it's now on the ISO button, which is where it belongs, and it's so much easier to use. Hopefully we'll get a firmware update on the 7D that gives us the same feature.

--
Mike
http://mikekatz.smugmug.com
 
I read about zone matching in the manual, but didn't quite grasp the concept.. can anyone explain it better and in what situations to use it?
 
ZM is like increasing the contrasts but only on the dark parts (LOW KEY) or the light parts (HIGH KEY) of the image.

For example, a JPG image has 256 levels of gray. With normal ISO, we could consider that 1/3 is used for the shadows, 1/3 for the midtones and 1/3 for the highlights. That's about 85 levels of gray each.

A normal contrast increase would give, for example, 100 levels for the shadows, 55 for the midtones and 100 for the highlights.

Now with LOW KEY, we would obtain something like 130 levels are assigned to the shadows, 40 for the midtones and 85 for the highlights.

So LOW KEY provides a way to improve the shadows without affecting the highlights. It is good in situations with a lot of shadows and a few bright spots (eg. a forest)

HIGH KEY does the opposite and so is good in bright situation with a few shadows (e.g. snow).

--
Stephane - Minolta 7D - Sigma 28-105/2.8 - Sigma 105/2.8 - KM 100-300 APO
http://www.chauveau-central.net/stephane/gallery/

 
Hi Mike

I've abandoned RSE for the time being....as I noticed when processing my scotland trip photos.... that there are crass hatched artifacts in images, always quite noticeable on clear blue skies. Have you had this... or know the best way around it?

Cheers!
--
Craig A Clark
Ark VFX LTD ~ Lydgate Lane ~ Sheffield ~ UK
http://www.arkvfx.net/
http://www.f-nine.co.uk/
http://www.pbase.com/caclark/
 
Great shots, Mike, and thanks for this thread. Zone Matching was one of those features that I skipped at the start and would never have gotten back to if it weren't for this post.

Now I've keyed the ISO menu selection it into M-Set for ready access.

Dennis

--
Fiat lux.
 
Thanks for the explanation. I never understood the benefit of zone matching from the manual's explanation.

Sounds like the same concept as applying Photoshop curves, only before the picture is even taken. Great idea.

Dennis

--
Fiat lux.
 
Noisy skies like this ,particularly if they are relatively cloud free, are easy to deal with - you just click a magic wand selection & apply gausssian bur. If the rest of the image is noise free you don't have to use a de-noise program at all.

Keith-C
 
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