The Zone System
Friday, November 27th, 2009
Developed by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer in 1941, the zone system is a systematic way work with exposure and processing to get the right gradient of tones from white to black.
Most of us are just trying to get a handle on the different light meters in our DSLRs, let alone using them more proactively to create a range of tones but in face, getting a handle on the light meter is exactly what Ansel Adams was thinking about when he came up with this.
Maybe the best way to think about this is in its historical context and when Adams and Archer were working on this there were no film or digital cameras that had a mode dial with “automatic” on it.
I use Silver Efex Pro from Nik software to make digital monochrome pics and that plug-in has zone system embedded nicely in. You can visually see if your photo has those zones and in what parts of the pic.
Jonne: I just looked up Silver Efex Pro. Interesting. You use it with Lightroom and feel what it does to monochrome images is better than what LR does natively? How so?
I feel that it has much better B&W film presets to start with than LR. The U-Point Technology it uses is really fantastic for selective control. Film grain emulation is also brilliant. I think it is superior as compared to LR when you want to do some B&Ws. Just test it, they have 15-day free trial.
Jonne: I’ll do that although I can honestly say that my skills with Lightroom’s monochrome tools are not all that great nor am I that picky about this stuff (yet). I will test it though, thanks for the reference.