Digital BW, The Print

>If you ever read anything by Phil Davis (had the privilege of going to his
>house once for a demo of his curve software/film tubes), you will
understand
>that the Zone System was technically flawed. . . . Dealing with digital
captuter (a linear process until we >introduce the S curve), and
"linearizing" inkjet output gives us tonal separation that wasn't
>possible (not easily anyhow) in a darkroom print. Even though matte papers
have 1
>to 2 stops less "blackness" than their RC counterparts, VISUALLY they
render
>far more tonal separation than was ever achieved in any darkroom print I
have
>ever made or seen.

I attended two of Phil's workshops and used his system with a pocket
computer in the field and his software for prints for many years.  He's
right if you think that the zone system is the pinpoint system, e.g. that
in real life one stop increases in exposure will produce exact .30 log unit
increases in film densities just like a 21 step wedge. But I don't know
anyone who knew enough to understand the zone system and who thought that. I
think most people understood that it is in fact the "zone" system, not the
pinpoint system (i.e. that it gets you into general vicinities not street
addresses). When that's understood it works very well despite the "technical
flaws" that Phil points out.

 However, there's no question but that digital gives us much better control
than film, paper, and the zone system ever did. Among other examples, I can
easily print a 21 step wedge digitally that shows all 21 distinct steps. In
the darkroom the best hat could be done using silver paper was about 10 or
so steps (i.e. about five stops). With film and silver paper you lost
separation at one end or the other or both.  The only darkroom process I
ever used that could equal digital in showing all 21 steps distinctly was
van dyke brown.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <claudej1@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 12:20 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Zone System



Ansel Adams was quoted as saying that Pre-Visualization in the Zone System
was more important than the technical side of it. Minor White's Zone System
book
emphasized the same thing. He seem rather annoyed at the overemphasis of the
technical side.

If you ever read anything by Phil Davis (had the privilege of going to his
house once for a demo of his curve software/film tubes), you will understand
that the Zone System was technically flawed.

Most of the time, one stop of luminance chage did NOT translate into 0.15
density change in the film. The film was non-linear (at the ends anyhow) and
the
paper was a "wild" S curve. So, when married together, you could see the
spaceds between zones was ALWAYS uneven, unlike the nice and neat Zone0-IX
aritificial step wedges we have seen a million times in books.

Dealing with digital captuter (a linear process until we introduce the S
curve), and "linearizing" inkjet output gives us tonal separation that
wasn't
possible (not easily anyhow) in a darkroom print. Even though matte papers
have 1
to 2 stops less "blackness" than their RC counterparts, VISUALLY they render
far more tonal separation than was ever achieved in any darkroom print I
have
ever made or seen.

Claude


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




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