What is the Relationship between Film Speed and Camera Exposure?

[Stephen Benskin]

I agree. I have the fourth edition from 1981.

[Bill Burk]

... I attended a workshop with Jim Galli and Per Volquartz and a bunch of great guys a few years back ...

Great story.

[MattKing]

I think this is relevant to the discussion here.

I have one of those fragments of memory that has stuck with me. It was an article about using the Zone System, and was related by someone who had run a workshop with a number of relatively inexperienced LF photographers.

Apparently, at the end of a day of shooting, they all developed their negatives and then got together to have them evaluated. The workshop instructor noted a common and consistent problem - while everybody seemed to have a good technical understanding of the Zone System principles, in a large number of cases the areas of the scene chosen by the students to base their exposure choices on were either too dark, or too light, or both.

In other words, they gauged very deep shadows as being "important shadow areas showing substance and detail" and very bright highlights as being "important highlight areas showing substance and detail", and they were adjusting their development to contract almost everything.

The problem wasn't with the theory, it was with training the perception.

[CPorter]

The problem wasn't with the theory, it was with training the perception.

I agree, having a good technical understanding of ZS principles doesn't always translate to a visualization that satisfies the intended final aesthetic.....speaking from experience, of course. Often it can turn out that a different visualization is needed.

[markbarendt]

I agree that over visualization/idealization can be a problem, but I also think the solution is easy; printing and practice.