Is The Zone System Still Relevant?
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Hey folks. this question has come up a few times recently so I wanted to offer my brief take on the subject.
Concept
Back when the Zone System was first conceived, film could deliver between 4 and 6 stops of dynamic range only. In order to make their prints more appealing, much work was done in the chemical darkroom to increase the amount of dynamic range. To help measure this, the Zone System was developed. It consists of eleven swatches, one stop in luminosity apart from black (Zone 0) to white (Zone 10). By use of selective control in the development and printing phases, photographers could not only extend the dynamic range of a print with dodging and burning, but also shift the core dynamic range of the film itself by manipulating development time for the film sheets themselves.
This eleven patch scale could also be used in the field to help photographers building skill learn to see the exposure zones and with the use of their light meter tools also decide where they wanted middle grey to fall in their exposure calculations.
For those who grew up with the Zone System, you know that I am massively oversimplifying the work that we all did to become competent.
Today’s Digital Sensors
The idea of an 11 swatch strip made sense when the dynamic range of film was 5 stops, but there have been statements made that the concept is worthless when a common digital camera has a native dynamic range of 12 stops and many as high as 14 stops. If we ignore the 8 bit limits of JPEGs and embrace the 14 bit depth of RAW, this seems even more likely.
Rather than toss the baby out with the bath water, consider instead a wider swatch strip with 14 or 16 or 20 stops of dynamic range. With 16 bit printing tools this could be done, however, even the 11 swatches of the classic Zone System strip can be an enormous aid in learning to see zones.
Why?
The human eye is heavily biased to colour. Indeed, the Mark One Mod 0 eyeball has evolved to see colour first, albeit with a bias for green, Seeing tonal range instead of colour is a skill that can be developed and is a requirement for anyone wishing to get better black and white photos in camera which will result in better black and white photos post processing.
To that end, to help you make better photos, leveraging the Zone System as a method to teach yourself to see colour is incredibly valuable. If you are so inclined, use the strip at the top of this article and again here at the bottom as a guide to take with you into your photographic work to learn to see the tonal ranges in your images and to start to recognize where in the Zone map they fit. The spotmeter built into your camera can help you, so long as you remember that whatever you meter with it, will be placed in Zone 5 or middle grey.
There is a book by Robert Fisher dating from 2012 that is now out of print, but that you can still find used, called The Digital Zone System that is quite good if you are more interested.
Thank you as always for reading. Please post comments or email in questions. If you shop at B&H Photo Video, please use the link on the home page as it pays me a small commission and incurs no extra cost to you. Until next time, peace.
