This is an interesting topic to introduce at this point in the course and it is one that I suspect many of my fellow students will have little prior knowledge of, unless in the past they have worked predominantly in film. Today we are working mostly, and in many cases I imagine exclusively, with digital cameras. I am though aware that there are a number of us – Badger’s Luddites, ha! – who are at least dabbling in film, both as an artistic choice, and as a means of learning, or relearning, some of the technical basics that are still relevant but somewhat subsumed by and potentially lost in the digital world. I therefore find it intriguing to see how a technique – which I confess until now has seemed to me, wrongly, somewhat esoteric and overcomplicated – that was worked out to help with development and printing of analog film photos can still be relevant in a digital realm.
With this in mind it is perhaps telling that none of the few books that deal with technique in my own modest library have much if anything to say about this Zone system. Ingledew (2005), for example, (at page 245) has only a very brief glossary entry: “An aid for determining the correct exposure and developing times to achieve the maximum gradation of grey values in a negative print.”
Even an older book, Hedgecoe (1976), which is pre-digital, does not mention it at all whilst nevertheless going through the basics of negative printing.
Adams’s book (1983), of course, refers to the Zone system a lot, picture by picture, but does not go much further in explaining how it actually works in practice.
Paradoxically, one of the best explanations I have come across has been published just very recently on the website of the Intrepid Camera Company, who are the makers of my 4×5 film camera. There is a link to the article below, which is a useful step by step, guide to the use of the system in practice. I have to confess though that I have not tried following it yet, not least because I am still trying to sort out a darkroom so that I can try my own printing. (It is amazing how much extra kit is needed in order to do your own printing. In comparison film developing is really easy as the chemicals are simple and the only critical equipment are a light-safe changing bag and developing tank. To print there are all sorts of extra things needed, not to mention a dark room itself. Fortunately I have a wine cellar that can be made fully light proof without too much work and will function adequately at least on a temporary basis.)
From a practical point of view I will explore the system further by having a go at the next exercise, though at the moment I am not at all sure what the subjects are going to be, nor exactly how I am going to go about it, in the absence of any guidance on how the system works with a digital camera. I think for the purposes of this I am going to have to concentrate just on using a digital camera, which is probably the only way I can get fully accurate light-readings. I do have a light meter, which I use in particular with my film cameras, but it is an incident meter rather than a spot meter, so although it is a very good one it does have some limitations. (Spot meters seem to be really expensive and for what I currently need for my analog photography it is not an indulgence I really want.)
Adams, A, (1983). Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs. Boston: Little, Brown & Co
Hedgecoe, J, (1976). The Book of Photography. London: Ebury Press
Ingledew, J, (2005). Photography. London: Lawrence King Publishing
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