Bruce Barnbaum - "Placing Shadows on Zone IV" 

I have a 1 degree spot meter i always meter for the shadows and place them at zone IV, and the results are always dead accurate, always!!! He is excellent

. He makes a powerfully good point when he says that, once you expose, you can't develop your way out of the problem, if you haven't exposed in such a way that you give yourself a chance for shadow separation

holy crow, this is amazing, thank you. that explanation of the 3 parts of the curve was very clear. much clearer than any of the more recent videos i've seen on using the tone curve in lightroom to manage contrast.

I take issue with the assumption that Zone III is always on the toe of the curve. Depending on the film, it might be well above that. What I take from this is that the main thrust of Barnbaum's technique is _positioning the shadows that matter above the toe._ But where that toe lies depends on what film you are using and how you develop it. This is why Ansel Adams was heavily into sensitometry; he wanted to know exactly how his films were going to behave before he put them in the camera. Looking at Adams's curves in his book, the toes seem well down into zones 0 and 1, hardly ever above 2, and he was willing to do all sorts of things (including pre-sensitising his plates) in order to straighten out the bottom part of the curve and preserve both shadow and highlight with sufficient dynamic range to encompass everything (where he could). The thing which struck me upon reading "The Negative" was that the zone system in its purest form as Adams conceived it is NOT a system which is easily amenable to use with 35mm or any other roll film, unless you are bulk-loading very short rolls for individual use on a specific subject; it depends very much on being able to develop and print EVERY SINGLE FRAME _uniquely according to the circumstances_, and he talks no end about doing this.

In practical terms for most situations it means taking a zone 4 reading, and learning to evaluate the contrast of each situation and to develop accordingly. More often than not your development time will be shorter when you take a zone 4 reading. A few development tests can zero anyone in in reasonably short order. Listen, Bruce's philosophy on exposure has made a huge positive difference in my work since the early 80's when I assisted him at The Tahoe Photographic Workshops in Truckee, CA.

This is very instructive

This makes complete sense. I have been struggling with this exact same problem for many of my BW negatives and I was just not able to understand whether my meter/metering was inaccurate, or my development was not enough or the way I was scanning my negatives was wrong. I am going to try placing the shadows on Zone IV and see if it works.

His point is right on target, and I hope many have heeded what he's talking about here. The zone system is based on the "expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights" reality that existed long before the Zone system came along. Believe it--placing those shadows on that rounded toe of the curve is magical.

After a month of study I finally understood...and yeah it make sense now! But I want to say that it depends...

I used the Zone System for my B&W photography and was a lab tech at National Geographic where I did halftone and color separations, film testing and process control. It needs to be understood Zones are not densities on the negative they are relative tonal values in the original scene and on the print. Adams defined Zone 0 in the scene as a black void like a cave entrance which was to be recorded on the negative with no density just film base + fog and the minimum amount of exposure when making the prints to produce maximum black on the clear Zone 1 areas and the film borders. In the highlights on the print the Zone 10 specular reflections in the scene are reproduced with the paper base and the Zone 9 smooth white highlighted objects are rendered on the print as a light tone of gray. What Zone System practitioners like myself would do to show they were adhering to the gospel of St. Ansel was file the negative carriers larger so when the entire negative was printed without cropping it would have a maximum black Zone 0 border around it. If the negative had been developed correctly to fit the range of the #2 paper when a contact print proof of the negative was exposed to reproduce the film borders as black and any density of silver as shade of gray, if the development time of the negative was correct for the contrast of the scene lighting the Zone 9 smooth solid white scene values would be a very light shade of gray on the print with the paper base reproducing the specular highlights so there was the perceptual contrast between the solid white object and the and Zone 10 paper base specular highlights necessary to create the illusion of 3D on white objects in a 2D reproduction. A good example of this would be a photo of a white car. The brightest non-specular white reflectance off the body would be Zone 9 with the specular highlights on the white body of the car - reflection of the source, the sun - would be denoted as Zone 10. But when printed the only way to render the Zone 10 specular highlights was to render the Zone 9 white of the car as a light gray with the white base of the paper reproducing the specular reflections of the light source. The need to reproduce the brightest solid whites in the scene as a gray tone on the print confused many, especially in the early editions of Adams books. I learned the system from the 1968 printing and in it there were only Zone 0 to Zone 9 because Adams didn’t assign a Zone number 10 to the specular highlights of the scene or the paper base. As a result photographers would use paper base to render the solid whites resulting in overexposure and loss of the specular reflection clues to 3D shape on the the white objects, the same thing that happens when color transparency film or digital image is over exposed. With regard to reproduction one f/stop differences in scene reflectance into a perceptually linear series of steps on the print one needs to realize the zones values on the print have no direct relation to the range of f/stops in the scene and that the print paper also had a toe and shoulder on its DlogE graph. Per the Gospel of St. Ansel if you exposed for Zone 0 shadows being reproduced as film base + fog and developed the negative so a standard exposure of the #2 print reproduced the Zone 9 solid vs Zone 10 speculars you correctly recorded the scene accurately on the negative and baseline proof print. But that was only the score and the start of the creative process because performance on the final prints was the result of exposure manipulation on the print to change the recored negative values via dodging and burning. Adams made very detailed note of where he dodged and burned on the baseline print using tissue overlay. Technically determining negative development time based on scene range made making the full range baseline proof print a no-brainer and something which could be easily done hundreds of times to sell copies of the prints. The details overlay maps for dodging and burning made that repeatable and also something which could be done by assistants, freeing him to capture more images. The modern equivalent is shooting digital with studio lights using enough fill light to reveal detail in a black towel, and then overlapping the key light until a white towel appears white but specular reflections on it are preserved. The solid black will have an histogram value of 0, the specular highlights a value of 255 and the photo will be PERCEIVED as having the same detail and tonal relaitionships on the print as perceived by eye. Once the goal of accurately recording shadow and highlight detail is achieved the tonal relationships can be altered in Photoshop by moving the middle slider which does not change shadows or highlights, just the tone of the middle values. Alternately you could burn or dodge to make print zone values higher or lower selectively.

wise words. thanks for sharing this.

He's not under exposing at all by exposing for a Zone 4, not at all. A zone 5 reading will under expose important shadows nearly all the time. Back in the 80's, my work took a huge jump forward when I started doing what Bruce is talking about. He gets, and I do as well, for the past 30 years or so.

Mr. Bruce Barnbaum, the second coming of Ansel Adam. If you can pick up his Art of Photography, do so. His book is the missing volume of Ansel Adam’s three volume set on composition to successfully execute the concept of pre-visualization in the modern digital era with the zone system.

He defines the textural range as being Zone III to Zone VII because that's where it has to fall, if you want to have control of highlights through development. Film has a limited tonal range. We can only push those tones around just so far. If you exposed with the intention of getting separation in zone 2, your highlights are going to be out of control in most situations, even with a substantially shorter development time.

Hmmmm............I wonder how all those great photos were taken before the zone system. Maybe those old masters knew what they were doing.

I shoot digital so I tend to protect highlights at all costs. I use a 1 degree spot meter and read the brightest object in my scene and place it on Zone VII. Then I can I easily recover any shadows during the RAW conversion.

Are there updates of the Zone System for digital photography?

@ZoneIII whats your source for the quote 'error'? Who said that?

I would be more inclined to say that most novice photographers fail to correctly analyze the scene for what should or should not be a Zone III reflectance. It is not so much that Zone III tones should be placed on Zone IV, but rather that tones that would be best placed on Zone IV or V are too often mistakenly placed on Zone III.

He did not mention N+1 film development which, is the second phase that completes the contrast expansion concept.

So what does that curve represent? on the x axis you have exposure levels (zones)...and on the y axis? Negative density?

Where Is the rest of this great lecture?

so, basically, expose slightly to the right of what you want and then develop/process accordingly?

So the age old rule, over expose by one stop and divide the development time by 1.4.

annoyingu4fun --says below, "You will see he has NO separations in shadow areas." He's right. Ansel's work if full of jet black shadows essentially devoid of separation. That's right, the emperor actually doesn't have any clothes on..:)). Bruce's exposure technique (or mine) would have separated those shadows so that there would have been at least a reasonable sense of space in those shadows.

He hasn't made a mistake in his technique. What he's doing it to correct a flaw in the Zone System, one that I've seen again and again with ZS'ers, namely poor separation in Shadows.

how do the 10 zone system works in a 12 or 14 stops dinamic range camera word?

Hi ...I think Zone VIII would still fall on the straight part of the curve, the shoulder being above Zone XV on the negative. So it's still printable with good tonal separation if you give it enough time under the enlarger.

So if I understand this correctly, I have to compensate one stop for the shadows instead of two?

Ah, well, it all seemed so simple.

Meant so say, So dodge the toe??

I have one issue with this: is the placement of zones on this curve really universal? Naively, it might be non-universal and depend highly on the particular film used (or maybe even the film/developer combination). For certain situations zone III might be well within the linear part of the curve. Anybody that has an answer to this?

Look, it all boils down to whether or not you what a sense of depth and space in your shadows. If you want it, Bruce's technique works.

No, he wasn't under exposing by "Zone System" standards, but yes, under exposing, and that's the point!

So is the idea to expose the negative as he suggests and then give the negative N-1 development?

@marshamk I mean, "clearly"?... any time anyone says "clearly" in an inexact science, it's a red flag.

So burn the toe??? No need. If you expose to place shadows on the curved part of the toe, and control your shoulder with development it's a win/win.

"he did pretty darn well, didn't he?"...well, the prints were sharp and clean, and seriously lacking in shadow "space". It didn't need to be that way.

This depends on what you want to do. If you want a nice smooth rendering of tones on your negative, you meter for shadows and expose to where they are zone IV. Then you under develop so your highlights are NOT blown out. I would start with 10-15 percent under developing time. If you want high contrast like Mario Giacomelli then you can throw this to the wind. Or you can shoot digital which is getting better and better, if you shoot smaller than 4x5, and just pull the shadows up in post. The dynamic range on these new cameras is fantastic, soon the highlights can even be pulled down in post.

The art of sounding usefull. WHY declare as a given that zone 3 is (in other words:) 'to low' ? This is really all about non sens. (BUT looks sooo honest because of that shared admission of those to-be blacks fell on zone 1 or 2 when ..etc) Such a video must include the notion of the total range of zones in a given scene. Then we have to assume You allready know what each of your films is able to reproduce best at different developing methods (to encompass how many f-stops). And you decide if certain zones you want black anyway - or..etc. ..knowing that texture and rich nuances in the highlights are best reproducible when highest-but-not-in-the-shulder. This segment of teaching shows me definitally this here is mambo jambo. (Myself have only given hints to a teaching. It's not to be taken as such)

everyone is exposing for zone 3 and this guy wants to reinvent the wheel. give me a break