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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Digital Zone System


If you thought DSLRs and new technology made the Zone System obsolete, think again. Updating the classic Ansel Adams tool for proper exposure will make your digital photographs as good as they can be.

Text And Photography By Michael Frye
Labels: Camera Technique, How To

This Article Features Photo Zoom
Michael Frye

When Ansel Adams developed the Zone System with Fred Archer in 1940, he gave photographers a tool great for controlling their images—but only with black-and-white film, and only with view cameras, where sheets of film could be processed individually. Today, any photographer with a digital camera can have even more control, whether working with black-and-white or color.

Zone System Basics
Zone 5 represents a midtone in the scene. Anything one stop darker will render as Zone 4, two stops darker, Zone 3, and so on. Anything one stop lighter will render as Zone 6, two stops lighter, Zone 7, etc. Most digital cameras can hold detail in Zones 3 and 7, but not beyond. In other words, Zone 8 and above are washed out, and Zone 2 and below are black. A light color will lose saturation above Zone 6, and a dark color can’t go below Zone 4 without becoming muddy.

Zone 0
Pure black
Zone 1
Nearly black
Zone 2
A hint of detail
Zone 3
Dark, with good detail but muddy color
Zone 4
Dark tone or color
Zone 5
Middle tone,
medium color

Zone 6
Light tone or pastel color
Zone 7
Light, with texture but faded color
Zone 8
A hint of detail, but essentially washed out
 Zone 9
Nearly white

Zone 10
Paper white

Such unprecedented power creates wonderful opportunities, but also can lead to confusion. How do you apply these controls? How far should you go? Do you have to reinvent the whole photographic process? No—because while the tools may be different, the basic principles of the Zone System still apply. The Zone System gives us a vital framework for understanding and controlling contrast in our images and a path to making prints with a full, rich range of tones—the range of tones for which Adams’ photographs are so famous.
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34 Comments

  1. Joe Conroy makes this comment

    Wednesday, 10 February 2010

    Michael, thanks for the great article. Who says you can't merge the processes of the past with the technology of today..?? Nice work.

  2. Terry O'Rourke makes this comment

    Thursday, 11 February 2010

    Superb article Michael.Integrating the Zone System into the digital arena effectively has long been a matter of concern. This can only help us combine the convenience of digital with the controls of the past .

  3. Michael Frye makes this comment

    Friday, 12 February 2010

    Thanks for your comments Joe and Terry - glad you like the article. You both hit on good points: photography is photography, and the same principles that applied before still work - with some adaptation.

  4. Lou makes this comment

    Wednesday, 17 February 2010

    Thank you for another well-written and insightful piece, Michael. I've always appreciated Ansel Adams' work and certainly appreciate the bridge you've built from then to now.

  5. David Piet makes this comment

    Thursday, 18 February 2010

    This was a great article. I've tried using the zone system, but never looking for the brightest highlight that I wanted to capture. Instead, I looked for a mid-tone for my spot metering. I'm anxious to give this a try. I assume that in the gorgeous photo on the first page, you would spot meter on the yellowish area and use zone 6? The waterfall is the brightest highlight but appears too small for a spot meter reading.

  6. Dean makes this comment

    Thursday, 18 February 2010

    I rellay like the artical. If the waterfall highlight area is too small in the photograph above, my experience with light meters would be to expose on the bright clouds (large area) or the sunlit green trees (large area). Do you agree or disagree? Personally I would expose on both the large lighter areas and bracket, pack up my gear, and go to the next viewpoint.

  7. Jay makes this comment

    Saturday, 20 February 2010

    Michael, this is one of the best articles I have EVER read on exposure. Just the suggestion of how to place highlights on Zone VI or VII was worth the price of admission. There have been a large number of lessons offered on using the Zone System for digital, but no one ever offered a practical way to apply it. Until now. Thanks for a great article; that issue of Outdoor Photographer just made it to reference status.

  8. Tom makes this comment

    Saturday, 20 February 2010

    I just sent a friend a link to this article. If you are going to read a few pages about exposure, then go into the field with a DSLR, I think this is the article that you should read. A superb article in a great issue!

  9. maverick makes this comment

    Sunday, 21 February 2010

    A great and refreshing article and well writen which gives us new ideas and new things to go out and try,and with a great conectione between the past and the future.well done

  10. Tim makes this comment

    Wednesday, 24 February 2010

    Great information. I guess I've been using these techniques for years with digital images without knowing it. I just started dabbling in HDR and combining multiple images to create a single photograph. I'm a photojournalist and cannot use this technique in newspaper photography because it is altering an image but it is fun to experiment and learn from for personal work.

  11. Dan Milham makes this comment

    Thursday, 04 March 2010

    I've been trying to "get it" for some time; how to utilize the zone concept when exposing. I always thought I'd be blowing out highlighted areas. Your article made me give it another try. Using a single exposure and RAW adjustments I've been able to really make use of the idea. Thanks very much.

  12. widhibek makes this comment

    Tuesday, 09 March 2010

    thx for sharing this great information before i always try to find the mid tone.. but your advise to spot in the zone 7 is like a new eureka for me..

  13. GH makes this comment

    Tuesday, 16 March 2010

    Good article. I've been doing the same spot metering of highlights for a while. However, I think it should be said that different camera brands and models meter differently from on another. For instance, with my Sony A900, metering highlights at +2.5-3.0 (at or near zone 8) works, because Sony designed the camera with a particularly long highlight rolloff. My point is, basically, that one should take the ideas of this article and apply them to how they work with their own camera, as many cameras behave a little differently.

  14. JIm Gao makes this comment

    Thursday, 18 March 2010

    I tried several shots after reading this great article and it works - much better than before! This newly adapted tone system theory makes me truely understand exposure. Thanks, Michael!

  15. Michael Frye makes this comment

    Wednesday, 24 March 2010

    Thanks for all the comments everyone, and sorry I didn't check back here sooner! David, you're right, the waterfall is too small, so I'd spot meter the yellowish area just below the middle of the photograph and call it Zone 6. Then of course I'd look at the histogram and adjust if necessary. GH, your point about different cameras is well taken. I didn't have space to go into it with this article, but some cameras have more dynamic range than others. I wrote the suggestions about Zone 7 with most digital SLRs in mind, but with some cameras you might be able to expose highlights at Zone 8 and still retain detail. I recommend testing your own camera to see its capabilities.

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  21. Russell Cottrell makes this comment

    Wednesday, 26 May 2010

    Hello, and thank you so much for this article. I have made some measurements and exposure-response curves which illustrate how to determine the actual range of a digital system; see them at http://www.russellcottrell.com/photo/BTDZS/. The standard zones of the film zone system do not neatly correspond to digital, but the principle remains the same.

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