Digital BW, The Print

On Jun 7, 2005, at 8:52 AM, Clayton Jones wrote:

> Hello James,
>
> >Then digital printing came in and screwed everything up :)
>
> LOL!  It certainly has changed things a bit hasn't it.
>
>
> >...his method of exposing for the highlights just isn't
> >how b&w photography works...to expose for the highs and let the
> >shadows fall where they may doesn't make sense to me.
>
> You have just fallen into the same trap that most others who
> criticized his methods fell into: to pick on one part of what he said
> without actually putting his entire approach to work in actual
> practice.

Then maybe he shouldn't have said what he didn't mean.  Maybe his  
method actually requires more explanation than the zone system.   
"Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights" is an elegant  
statement, and more to the point about how film works and less  
misleading than to say "expose for the highlights", and then say the  
second part of his approach, which is that the negative is not the  
print, and that film and paper have different capabilitiues for  
capturing subject brightness ranges vs rendering those in print  
tones.  Yeah, duh.  The zone system is not exactly unaware of that.   
But film works the way film works; if you want to get through Atlanta  
or go around it, that doesn't change Atlanta's location.  Minor White  
had a whole system intended to explain Ansel.  It was not more  
elegant or easier.  Phil Davis has a detailed method for the  
densitometer-armed and data-comfortable careful worker.  Arnold  
Gassan and Al Belson each had simpler ways of testing and calibrating  
for exposure.  None of these methods subsequent to Ansel's changes  
anything with regard to how film works:  if you want shadow detail,  
you have to expose for it.  If you want the highs to not block up or  
be flat, then you have to know where they're going to land when you  
develop.  If you want to work from the highs down, as is common when  
printing, that's fine.  The zone system gives you tools to do that, too.
>
>
> The most valuable part of his teaching for me was that we _must_ learn
> how to properly test for exact exposure and development times for our
> own particular combination of shutter, film, light meter, lens, paper,
> chemistry, etc - all the factors, and then how to apply them in a way
> to consistently get the results we want.

Ansel said all that long before Fred.

Maybe Fred's statement "expose for the highlights" is taken out of a  
larger context.  But the example I read on one of the Fred sites,  
which cites a snow scene with a log in it, made it sound as if the  
zone system shooter was slavishly bound to expose for the log, while  
ignoring the primary interest, which was the snow, while Fred's  
system, AHA!! realizes that the snow is the more important subject!!   
Well, that's just plain silly.  The article further goes on to say  
that if the white snow is rendered gray on the neg, that that's ok,  
because anything can be printed any way in the darkroom.  And while  
that may be true to an extent, it ignores the aspect of the headroom  
of the neg.  If the info either isn't on the neg or is so dense that  
you can't get to it, then print values will suffer at one end or the  
other. Or even mids can suffer, and look "greasy" (Phil Davis's  
term.)  That's what place and fall is all about.  The article implies  
that well, it's the subtle intricacies of the snow we're interested  
in, not some silly old log.  Well, fine.  Could well be.  The zone  
system gives you every tool to deal with that.  Maybe you don't care  
about the shadows in a particular image.  Maybe you in fact don't  
care about Atlanta, and just want to get around it.  Fine.  But if  
you do care about the shadows, or do want a full range neg, then you  
have to expose for the shadows and make sure the highs aren't jammed  
up in some unprintable blob on the neg.  No way around that one.   
Maybe that's what Fred is saying in a different way, but if it is,  
then he's just reinventing the wheel.

James