How does the Zone System work? Photography?

Question

How does the Zone System work? Everything i read about it, is to complicated! Can someone explain it to me simply?

Answer 1

i've been studying this question too for a long time so here's my best go at it:
tones in black and white photos are broken up into the different zones. there are 10 zones with 0 being absolute black and 9 being absolute white. light meters on cameras are designed to read everything at neutral gray which is zone 5. problem with that is you may not want certain things to be middle gray. and doing so may throw off all the other tones in your image leaving areas that are way too dark or way too light.
the simple way to implement is to fool your camera into taking the picture your way instead of its way. to do this you need an 18% gray card. you can get this at many photo stores. once your have your scene set up place the gray card in the scene (like right next to your subject) and take a meter reading directly off the gray card. it helps to have a handheld meter but if not just bring you camera in close (like a few inches) and take your reading. let's say for argument's sake the reading is f/16 @ 250. keep your camera at that setting regardless of whether or not the reading is different when you pull your camera away from the gray card. this will give you fairly consistent photos but may ignore some fine detail.
to make fine adjustments you'll need to start bracketing. all the zones can be moved to by opening and closing stops. so let's say you take a close up meter reading off someone's skin. that will place the person's skin at zone 5 and everything else will be based around that. things that are darker than the person's skin will be darker and vice versa. to make the person's skin appear lighter or darker you need to open up or close down enough stops (more or less light/time) to get to that zone. using the earlier example of f/16 @ 250 to get the person's skin to appear in zone 3 you need to open up 2 stops. so you'd need f/16 @ 60 or f/8 @ 250.
this isn't exactly uncomplicated but it's basically this. start off by metering to middle gray. then decide where you want your tones to end up in the zone system and adjust your camera accordingly.
hope this helps and feel free to e-mail me with any mroe questions.

Answer 2

Ara57 is correct but see if I can do better explaining it (not sure I can)

Let's start at black and take a journey through gray to white.

Zone 0 is jet black
Zone 1 is very close to black
zone 2 is very dark gray

and so on until

zone 8 is very nearly white
zone 9 is snow white

Effectively digital cameras see zones 0 & 1 as black and zones 8 & 9 as white. So to have any other meaning the camera needs to record everything between zones 3 & 7 or 5 zones of gray.

The reason photographers have to think about this is because if you go to photograph a snowfield, the camera will try to select an exposure that records the snow as zone 4 - 5, so the photographer has to effectively "over expose" to force the snow up to zone 8 - 9 where it should be.

Obviously in other situations the effect is much more subtle, but part of being a good photographer is to think about how the camera wants to record the image vs how the photographer wishes to record it.

This becomes even more vital in the digital age because digital sensors are not quite as good as film in this respect. Furthermore the photographer may choose to over or under expose to capture detail that would otherwise be lost and then later correct the overall exposure in software on the computer later.


It's a lot to think about!

Answer 3

First of all if you are using a 35mm camera or any camera that uses roll film forget about using the zone system. The zone system works best with cameras that use sheet film such as view cameras.
Anyhow it really isn't easy to explain the zone system in a nutshell. I myself spent a whole semester in advanced black and white learning the zone system. But let me attempt to break or shall I say butcher the zone system into its integral parts. So the whole concept behind the zone system is that there are 9 shades and tones of black and white, and in the ideal photo there are 9 zones. To start you make an exposure of the shadows as well as the highlights and make notes on the differences in the lighting conditions. Then you make an exposure based on the shadows. After exposing your image you are ready to develop. However, if you develop as normal using the standard exposure times you are going to end up with a photo that has plenty of detail in the shadows and absolutely no detail in the highlights. However, the perfect photo should have detail in both the shadows and the hightlights and have areas that are pure black as well as pure white. So to properly develop your image there is this little formula which I wont go into which will give you the corrected development time for your particular negative the figures of which are derived from the lighting differences between the highlights and shadow areas that you took notes on. As you may know the longer you develop the negative the more detail will appear in the highlights. So perhaps now you can understand where the phrase"expose for shadows and develop for highlights" comes from.
However, there really is no easy way to explain the zone system so I suggest you buy a book. I provided a link below. Again, don't bother with the zone system if you aren't using a view camera.

Answer 4

I believe Ansel Adams was the first to work out a zone system. Basically, it assigns zones to the values in the photographic subject and translates that into exposure settings and making the black and white print. Darks are 0, 1, 2 and 3. Middle values are 4, 5 and 6. Light values are 7. 8 and 9.

Briefly, pure black is zone 0, black with absolutely no detail.
Pure white with no detail is zone 9. (Snow in bright sunlight)
Zone 5 is 18% grey. ( Weathered wood, clear sky.)
Zone 4 is shadow, dark foliage.
Zone 6 is average Caucasian skin.
Zone 8 is shady snow.

So when determining your exposure, choose the area of your subject that you want to be in whatever zone and expose for that zone.

The simpler version is, use the zone when you either need to maintain shadow detail or avoid blown highlights by zoning the lightest or darkest areas of what will be the final print.

Gosh, I'm reading back over this, and it doesn't make too much sense, does it?! Hopefully someone more succinct will come along and help!

Answer 5

The zone system is a technique developed by Ansel Adams for black and white photography. It can be a bit complicated, so please check out the link below for detailed information. Basically, a grayscale is used and different "zones" assigned to each tone. Zone 0 is pure black, zone 10 is pure white. Zone 5 is middle grey (18% grey). This scale is used to help determine exposure.

Answer 6

things you need: your film that your going to stick with, a spot meter, and the developer that you're going to stick with
1) you compose your image
2)meter the darkest part in that scenery that has texture to your eye(make sure its an important element in your photograph)
3)take a meter reading of the brightest tone that has tone and texture to your eyes
4) figure out the stop differences between your darkest value and your brightest value. Ex: my shadows give me EV 9 and my highlight gives me EV 14, thats 5 stop difference, 14-9=5
5) once you figured out the stop difference, thats going to tell you your developing time,
a)3 stop difference= +2 development
b)4 stop difference= +1 development
c)5 stop difference= Normal development
d)6 stop difference= -1 development
e)7 stop difference= -2 development
*** The reason we want the range to be with in 5 stops is because you are going to be placing your shadows at zone 3 and highlights at zone 8, and thats a 5 stop difference*****
6) once you figured out your development time, go back the meter reading that you got when metered for the dark values
7) STOP DOWN 2 STOPS: ex. if i got a reading of f/8 1/250 i can either stop down 2 stops and go to f/16 or go faster on my shutter speed 2 STOPS to 1/1000. EITHER SHUTTER SPEED OR APPETURE NOT BOTH.
8) then fire the shutter.
9) now that you got your roll/sheet of film ready to develop, remember your stop difference.