Zone, instruments, Ansel
2005-09-30 by djon43
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/zone_system.shtml Ansel's system centered on TRAINING THE EYE to previsualize and control B&W from color scenes. It only SECONDARILY utilized densitometry. Slightly knowing the man (a customer) and better knowing some of his disciples, it was obvious that he attracted attracted anal retentive types, some of whom became fine scenic photographers (as opposed to portrait, journalistic, or illustrative), many of whom became merchants in tourist galleries (as in Carmel, Moab, NYC). AA's B&W gospel was not the ultimate and his densitometry was just a particular spin. Ansel's particular spin on Zone System was, in addition to his own obsessive mindset, substantially due to the fact that films and papers were not as predictable in his early days as they became in the Sixties (the B&W materials...critical color still required testing, batch-by-batch, but skilled color photographers worked VISUALLY, developed advanced VISUAL skills, just as Ansel taught in B&W) . Ansel elected to use densitometry when it became available. His early prints weren't technically as wonderful by modern standards as were the early images themselves, due to his aspirations, not to early lack of densitometer...if you've seen his life's work in hundreds of original prints you see that. Ansel's primary technical gift to us (facilitated by Minor White, the better teacher) was PREVISUALIZION of zones: Learning reliably to see specific zones of grey in color scenes, controlling them in exposure, processing, and printing. The beginning and center of that process was learning to identify Zone Five...which EVERYBODY in the 60s and 70s had to learn visually, whether or not they ever heard of Zone System or Ansel: Basic proper use the TTL meters in the various FTNs, F1s and Spotmatics...which are designed specifically for Zone Five (same as Kodak's grey card).