Zone System/Photoshop Developing

[Doug MacMillan]

I was thinking along the lines of hardware. I should have remembered software solutions, which is certainly an alternative worth investigating. I guess my conservative nature makes me want to do as much correction as possible at the time of image capture.

Doug

I just don't
think they'll be a reasonable alternative for a 4x5 with swings and
tilts in the near future.

--
Thomas Niemann
http://epaperpress.com

 

[James Long]

The zone system is the zone system regardless of the medium or methods for manipulation of the medium.

Try this:

1. Set your digital camera to manual exposure.

2. Read the exposure of a blank textureless object that fills the frame (sheet of paper, etc.)
3. Reduce the exposure by the equivalent of 7 f/stops (Zone -1)

4. Expose 12 frames, beginning with this exposure and increasing exposure by the equivalent of one f/stop per frame. You will capture frames from Zone -1 to Zone 10.

5. Load these frames into Photoshop, convert them to grayscale, and read the luminosity in the middle of each frame.

6. Plot the (log of) luminosity readings versus the (log of) exposures and you will see your camera's gamma curve (including toe and heel).

Same as film.

You get the N, N+1, N-1, etc. by varying image contrast, preferrably using a curves layer or layers.

 

[Jon ...]

In my understanding of the Classic Adams Zone System, one can evaluate the luminance of the scene before them, visulize the finished print, and, thru exposure and development and bleaching/toning, on film, one can compress these values from the scene or expand them.

With our Imagers, we can not do that. Once we drop the shutter, if the scene in front of us is a fourteen stop range, something will give. Either we will lose shadow detail, or end up with some blocked highlights. We can not manipulate data that does not exist on the imager at the time of exposure.

Film can. If one is photographing a clear lightbulb in a basement with shadows everywhere, one -can- contain the detail in the shadows -and- include the glass bulb and filament and make a print that displays just that. I (and others) have done it many times.

In digital, we can shrink/expand the hi and lo points of the image, but, we can not compress information that is not there.

Jon ...

 

[R.S. Adams]

You're exactly right! And exactly wrong!

If you work in a very deliberate style (spell that tripod), and are shooting static subjects -- digital can give you the best of all worlds. Shoot several exposures for the correct "zone" throughout the range of the subject before you.

Use separate layers in photoshop to composite these layers. Erase, blend, opacity change as appropriate.

Voila . . . more tonal range than any piece of film ever invented.

It sounds difficult, but isn't.

 

[James Long]

The EOS-D30 has a greater dynamic range than any color film on the market.

 

[Stephen Schwartz115733]

Hi,
Forget the Zone system. AA came up with the Zone system for
developing B&W film and Photo. paper.

This is nonsense. First AA did not invent the zone system EW used the concept and it was common amongst all the f64 crowd. Densitometry, moreover, has bene aorund a long time.

Second, you certainly can (and should) use the concepts of "zone" in any photgraphy. All this means is you want to know your medium well enoought so you can previsualize the final image including where there will be detail, contrast etc. This is tru on B&W or in RBG and Black.

Third, like many folks you mistake Ansel's over technological exposition of the ZS for his real goals ... which certainly included color. You are correct that in the predig. age it was hard to be precise about color but Ansel, amongst other did try. Most forlks could nto afford to previsualize images that would be doen a s color seperations. Digital means we can all do that!

Persoanlly, I am disappointed that our cameras do not give us MORE ZS control over aquistion. There is no reason a digital camera could not allow a lot of ZS control, seprated into the three color channels for that matter. It wouldbe very interesting to be able to control the exposure curves to compensate for bright highligts etc.

As an example, on ZS tool I have used to deal with extreme lighting is to use mutliple exposures and then piece them together in PS. That way I can cappture highlights, even though the rest of teh image may be too dark.

 

[Stephen Schwartz115733]

Great post!

I also recommend Monor White's little yellow manual.

 

[Stephen Schwartz115733]

Actually I do use the ZS all the time. I do a lot of spot metering and am aware of what I will need to do later in PS. As one example, I am often very interest in detail in high zone areas while keeping detial in the rest of the image. To do this, I may use two exposures.

 

[Stephen Schwartz115733]

Jon,

You are mostaking Ansels black thumb for his light meter. The amount of manipulation one can achieve by varying exposure of film is limited. Actually, there is no reaosn a digicam could not have MORE of this sort of thing built in than film does .. sinc eour images are dveloped in the camera.

Ansel, BTW worked with the equivalent of digital .. he even wrote a book on the subject (Polaroid photogrpahy).

He also worked in colr and there are a few insipid impages of that work around. However, his tyle was 19th century romantic and manipulating color before digital to get the effects he wanted was not possible w/o a lot of investment in color seps, etc.

I spent some time as a color photgrpaher before giving it up ... not beacuse I was frustrated with the limits of exposure, but because of the printing. Beofre dig. it was very ahrd to burn and dodge in color because the different died reposn differently! So a burn might cause a color shift (ugh!).

As someone devoted to previsualization I could not previz. color becaue I was limited to whatever interpretation Kodak built into the film! I know AA felt the same way (he and I discussed this).

I am certain that AA today wuld be a digital photgrapher. Of course he would also have a custom 8X10 back made for him by Sinar with a gazillion pixels!

 

[Timo Autiokari]

The zone system is the zone system regardless of the
medium or methods for manipulation of the medium.

The ZoneSystem tries to utilize the so called usable range (of the wet chemical process) that remains after the paper is exposed with the negative. Usable range is that portion of the exisiting range that appears decently well for the human vision, both the negative and the paper are strongly non-linear, the non-linear transfer function of the paper tries to compensate the non-linear transfer function of the film but this is far far from perfect so both the highlights and the dark-end remain heavily compressed and only what is in between them appear decently correctly.

With digital imaging, that is properly color-managed by the use of accurate ICC profiles the whole capture range of the acquire device is the usable range, (well in reality the dark end noise does reduce it). So with digital imaging the "zone system" is such that we expose in such way that the the image data has full histogram (that is not clipped, at least not seriously clipped). When exposed like that we will use the full capture range of the camera and the ICC color-management ensures that the tonal range is basically correct. Then depending on the type of the actual scene we may need to enhance the tonal range in postprocessing, e.g. scenes that hagve very large dynamic range require some "opening of the shadows" because the CRT nor a print can not show very large dynamic range so the image has to be rendered somewhat so that it will appear similarly as the original scene appeared for the unaided eye.

Timo Autiokari http://www.aim-dtp.net

 

[Doug MacMillan]

I am certain that AA today wuld be a digital photgrapher. Of
course he would also have a custom 8X10 back made for him by Sinar
with a gazillion pixels!

Stephen,

I know you're kidding about the Sinar part, but I've run into some folks who deduce by the quality of his images that Ansel must have been a gadget freak and always used the latest and greatest. Some have also noticed how renowned he is and what some prints sell for at auction and figure he must have been quite wealthy.

Ansel used good gear but I'm not aware of his gear being custom made for him or top of the line, although there might be a few exceptions. He used the same enlarger I have in my darkroom (Beseler 45). Some of the gear he used to make some of his most famous images is downright primitive compared to what some amateurs are using nowadays, especially the lenses.

From what I've read, Ansel made a comfortable living, but didn't get rich. He married into money, which afforded him the luxury of pursuing his art. His wife's family had the concessions at Yosemite, therefore he lived there for a while and had the time to wait for just the right conditions.

I'm not trying to blow a small comment out of proportion, but there's too much of the mindset that "if I only had a camera as good as Ansel's, I could take great photographs too".

Regards,
Doug

 

[Jon ...]

After having taken workshops in Yosemite at The Gallery and from John Sexton who was Ansel's last assistant ...

To my knowledge. Ansel had good equipment but never state of the art. His Hasselblad was given to him by Victor Hasselblad. His 8x10 enlarger was homemade from an 11x14 camera. His 4x5 enlarger was a Beseler. In all the pictures from his many books etc, his equipment was always about average.

His trays for the sink were handmade from stainless steel. His last darkroom in Carmel was laid out the way he wanted but not that exotic.

Nor, did he have a patent on making an average negative look that great. He -was-, an exceptional printer and mastered his craft the old fashioned way, by Practice, Practice, Practice ...

I only wished I could have known him at a workshop or personal level.

Jon ...

 

[Rinus Borgsteede]

The zone system is totally based on the very wide latitude of film. The processing of that film (Ansel Adams style) is simply to accomodate the printing paper. You realize that what I said is a simplification of the process but essentially that is the purpose of the zone system. The name zone system was only coined after the distinct steps in the exposure process. Ansel Adams simply used the f stops as a guide for the various tone zones.

In digital, there is no need to really do this. With correct exposure the range is what it is and there is no more! Of course, the spot meter can tell you what you are looking at.

Just like with slides, the range of the tones can be seen by the human eye but the range cannot always be printed on paper even if it is in the digital file.

For the digital file we can say that the zones need to be exposed at the highlight or shadow region to maintain detail but if outside the camera range, the opposite range will have to be sacrificed.

The range that is left, can now be manipulated in Photoshop to look as good as any Ansel Adams print. That is another story of course.
Rinus of Calgary

 

[KStJ]

The aim of the zone system is simply to ensure firstly that the the full range of brightness levels in the scene is captured onto the negative, secondly that the mid range tones are printed as such and finally that the full variation is represented on the print.

This is quite difficult with single meters and film developing: you would have to identify the bright and dark parts of the scene, meter them, and work out an exposure that kept them both within the dynamic range of the film. That might put the nominal 18% grey somewhere off a 'normal' exposure, and that you'd correct in developing. The most difficult bit is adjusting the development conditions to compress the dynamic range into the inevitibly smaller range you have on a print.

With a modern camera, there are two easy ways to do the first step: first, you could trust the automatic exposure calculation which in any good camera should really do a reasonable job. It may stress getting the grey level 'right' over matching the tonal range, though, so if you don't fancy that, the best thing is to take one shot, check the histogram, and if some tones have gone off the end, or there's empty unused space at the top, retake with a corrected exposure. If there's detail falling off the bottom, you'll need to do the double exposure blending trick. It certainly takes less time to take a 'test' photo than all the metering used to. If your camera had a live histogram preview, that would be even better. If you get into the habit of checking the histogram after you take a photo you'll develop a sense of what kinds of scene are going to need an exposure tweak before you even take the shot.

The best time to correct the grey level if you've corrected the exposure as above is to shoot in RAW and apply exposure compensation when you convert to JPEG or whatever. If you do this correction to an 8 bit JPEG file, you're in danger of introducing some noise into your shadows.

Matching the contrast level to the output device is much easier digitally than it was chemically, with a gamma or curves adjustment, or there are photoshop actions around that do this. If you're set up the output device colour profile, your image processing software will probably be able to warn you what parts of your image are out of its gamut.

have fun!

--
Kingsley Reavell
MSM, Cambridge

 

[MarkMcCombs]

no, I don't think so.......

The EOS-D30 has a greater dynamic range than any color film on the
market.

 

[Jorge Alban]

.....How have you gone from the flexability of film development using the zone system to using digital?

The Zone System is used for two main things:

1- Zone placement or getting the exposure right. As it has been pointed out here it can be done with any camera or light meter that has an exposure scale. Spot metering is convenient but not an absolute necessity, especially if the camera dispalys a histogram with blinking overexposed highlights.

2- Contrast adjustment (and previsualization) to ensure detail is present in all the important zones. This is a little more elaborate as tonal compression/expansion in a predetermined number of gray steps requires calibration AND can affect what is considered a "correct" exposure (#1)

Please note that the often adviced highlight/shadow average DOES NOT produce a correct exposure if the scene’s contrast exceeds what the camera can capture (almost anytime you can see sharp shadow edges or the subject has a wide reflectance range).

Since digital captures have more exposure latitude in the shadows than in the highlights, when shooting digital it is good idea to take a selective reading off ZONE VI 1/2 (opening one and a half stop from the white tone that must hold full detail). Never measure off a specular highlight.

The old saying "expose for the shadows and develop for the highlghts" must be turned into "expose for the highlights (properly placed in 12-bit=RAW ) and photoshop for the shadows" for digital (using some of the excellent advice already given to you in this thread).

Jorge Alban
Costa Rica

 

[tony field]

In digital, there is no need to really do this. With correct
exposure the range is what it is and there is no more! Of course,
the spot meter can tell you what you are looking at.

Humm, my Fuji has 3 levels of contrast specification. This is roughly, i think, the equivalent of (without running tests) normal, normal- and normal+ development. If you run the zone system exposure tests fo the three contrast settings, you should see differences in density range on the plotted H&D curves. If you understand these density ranges, you can properly meter a scene and choose the correct camera contrast setting and exposure.

The zone system is a "useful bridge between sensitonometry and the more scientific aspects of the medium, and the practical creative procedure" (from The Negative, Ansel Adams, 1959). There is a very useful reason to do the zone system tests. The primary creative gain would be the proper understanding of the exposure system available to your camera and digital sensor.

Remember that, in the 1960's, everybody said that the zone system was not useful for 35mm photography because you could not develop each frame independently. One fellow finally created a methodology that did adapt the zone system to 35mm. Since the digital camera contrast setting is the equivalent of develpment adjustment (within reason), seems to me that the zone system is even more applicable with digital camera systems.

tony

 

[Thomas Karlmann]

OK, I've read all this, now tell me how I can linearize my shots in PS.

I know how to do curves, I can set the white point, the Black point, the neutrals. I can also expose so that my histogram doesn't eat the highlights.

Now, can anyone tell me how to make all this linear? Like if I shoot a MacBeth chart -- I'll set my light & dark points. Then, for some reason, I want my middle gray tone (OK so MacBeth doesn't have a MIDDLE gray) to the midpoint of my curve, and evenly space my other points too.

Is ther some way to automate this, or do we all rely on our ICCs to do this?

Jus' thinkin'

Thom

 

[WalterK]

OK, I've read all this, now tell me how I can linearize my shots in
PS.

I know how to do curves, I can set the white point, the Black
point, the neutrals. I can also expose so that my histogram
doesn't eat the highlights.

Now, can anyone tell me how to make all this linear? Like if I
shoot a MacBeth chart -- I'll set my light & dark points. Then,
for some reason, I want my middle gray tone (OK so MacBeth doesn't
have a MIDDLE gray) to the midpoint of my curve, and evenly space
my other points too.

Is ther some way to automate this, or do we all rely on our ICCs to
do this?

Once you set your curves up to compensate the way you described, you can simply save the curve, and reload it for any image you want. If you include it in an action , or even better, a Droplet, you can put all of your images taken in similar lighting into a folder, drag the Droplet into that folder, and Voila!

--
Walter K

 

[Rinus Borgsteede]

Humm, my Fuji has 3 levels of contrast specification. This is
roughly, i think, the equivalent of (without running tests) normal,
normal- and normal+ development. If you run the zone system
exposure tests fo the three contrast settings, you should see
differences in density range on the plotted H&D curves. If you
understand these density ranges, you can properly meter a scene and
choose the correct camera contrast setting and exposure.

Without doing any testing, I thought that the contrast settings in the S2 were of the "non linear" type.

What I mean with this is that they were simply S shaped curves applied to the images. I do not believe that the actual contrast range of the file was being changed.
Do you know of anyone having tested this?
I may start another post to find out in the Fuji DSLR forum.
Rinus of calgary