Venom81 said:
Zone system? Wats that? Care to explain to me? :dunno:
The fundamental of the Zone system is the splitting of exposure into 9 zones: Zone 1 is black while Zone 9 is brightest (pure white). Zone 5 or Zone V is the half-way point. Each interval of the Zone corresponds to 1 f-stop. Please note that this is a theoretical framework. It is difficult to produce accurately all the 9 zones via most printing process. You get more accurate representative of the zones from a monitor screen.
The real zone system includes ways to expose and develop film to achieve print where every area of the photograph is printed at the zone (darkness or brightness) that the photographer intended. The discipline thus covers analysing the scene, lighting, light-metering, darkroom techniques (including chemicals used, time taken, type of paper used for printing), calibrating the entire system, etc., and has lots of reference tables and charts. It takes Ansel Adams more than one book to cover everything he had to say about his Zone system. The Zone System is in fact a very American civil engineering approach to photography.
It is not necessary to know the Zone system to take good photographs nowadays as many photographer do not have control over the development of their films or negatives. And much more can be achieved by spending time to learn Photoshop instead of the Zone system. So most books on general photography don't bother to mention it.
Some of the principles of the Zone System are however useful in answering questions like:
-- why camera suppliers sells 18% grey cards to photoraphers to use for light metering?
-- is there an objective and repeatable way to describe, and measure exposure?
-- What are the very basic principles used by your camera to determine the correct exposure for you?
-- How to do spotmetering?
If these are indeed the topics covered, then it is more accurate to describe the workshop as "Understanding the concepts of exposure" rather than a Zone System workshop.