Zone system of photography?

Question: Zone system of photography!?

why is the zone system so important and how would photography be today without it!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

This sounds a lot like an essay question!.

In todays digital world, it has no importance except as a vehicle to understand exposure and how processing adjustments made while developing black and white film can enhance and expand the expected tonal range of any black and white film!. The zone system was used with reflective light meters and the "expansion and compression system" was used with incident light meters!.

It seems that many do not need it, so with or without it matters not to them!.

I for one believe it is essential to understand exposure and development in order to use any photographic medium with the least amount of post production "fixing"Www@QuestionHome@Com

Ansel Adams was the master of the zone exposure system you can see some examples here!.

http://www!.anseladams!.com/

It works by recording as much of the dynamic range (the range of tones from the lightest to the darkest) as possible and recording detail in all parts of the picture!. This was done by metering all parts of the scene, averaging the readings, then selecting a developer from several with differing formula's based on these meter readings to obtain the results required!. It needed a lot of skill and knowledge to get it right!.

With today's digital cameras which can't record as wide a tonal range as film we have to resort to bracketing shots and using HDR (High Dynamic Range) to get similar results!. This has been around for years, but what took ages in a darkroom can now be done relatively easily in software such as Photomatix Pro!. May be I should say overdone in Photmatix Pro as so many pictures are!. Not many people take the time to learn the system from before you take the picture to the final processing, there's a lot of twiddling the settings without much knowledge, and a that'll do philosophy, the results are frankly often dire, but it is capable of creating superb images when done properly!.

ChrisWww@QuestionHome@Com