martinfisherphoto wrote:
Really appreciate you doing all this. One question while I'm thinking about it.. What's the best way to determine the actual DR of a scene before you shoot it? I've read and understand Adams book on the zone system, but from what I see he's not covered the full range, or others Zones are smaller in size. What more do I need to know?????
You could try a hand held spotmeter or use the spot metering mode of your camera but even that has it limitations. A spot meter reading is still an average of the brightness inside the designated circle, 1 degree in diameter in a hand held meter.
The Zone System describes what can be seen in the print, not the range of exposure values in a scene. It may or may not track at one exposure value per zone. That's up to you.
The Zone System is related closely to what is possible to see in a print, more specifically in a B&W print, under normal indoor illumination. The examples Adams used were taken from his own subject matter and we have to do a little interpretation to apply them to our own photography.
The descriptions that he lays out a still applicable to all printed photographs if we abstract them to remove the specific subject matter:
0 - Maximum black: ink or developed silver can't get any blacker, RGB value 0,0,0
I - Dark tonality with no clear texture
II - Dark texture with no clear detail
III through VII - dark to light detail
VIII - Light texture with no clear detail
IX - Light tonality with no clear texture
X - Maximum white: can't get any whiter than the paper, no ink or silver, 8-bit RGB value 255,255,255
When you are looking at an image, if you see detail, you are probably seeing several adjacent pixels with brightness two or more zones apart.
You can do all sorts of stuff to the captured image in the nine interior zones to increase or decrease overall or local brightness, contrast or color but the middle five zones are pretty much where the image is going to be appreciated . Those five zones may be initially aligned with the five Ev steps around your middle gray meter reading but that's just where your post processing begins.
That's not a short answer but if you have been learning about the Zone System you have probably seen longer descriptions.