"A change of materials often does require adaptation in the way we apply the Zone System, but in no way eliminates its principles or usefulness in creative visualization." -Ansel Adams, The Negative

Most people are aware of the importance of Ansel Adams and his work, and almost every photographer is aware of the Zone System; a methodical process he popularized for visualizing a print before exposure and then deliberately applying controls throughout the photographic process to actualize the visualization. The Zone System provides a framework for mapping a specific luminosity represented by an exposure meter value, in the camera or spot meter, before the exposure is made, to a specific tonality in the final print.

The Digital Zone System seeks to provide the exact same ability to map a luminosity measured by an exposure meter value to a tonality in the final print. However keep in mind that what I present here is a framework; the Digital Zone System is an extension of the original Zone System from which you creatively depart rather than one to which you rigidly adhere. This is in no way to limit your creative vision nor is it to limit your creative use of the tools involved.

When making photographs you must be thoroughly familiar with the workings of your camera and usually operate it in "manual mode" making decisions yourself and not allowing the machine to arbitrarily make decisions on your behalf. The Digital Zone System is useful to those who desire to make photographs rather than take pictures.

Given a scene which captures our interest, we need a way to visualize what it's print tonalities will look like. To stop taking pictures and start making photographs we need several points of reference. To accomplish this I encourage you to create your own grayscale. If you do not own PhotoShop or are unable to perform the steps below in your version of PhotoShop or digital darkroom software, you may download the grayscale graphic here. However I strongly encourage you to create your own, as it provides an irreplaceable depth to the process; a tactile experience which will help you in internalizing this process.

In PhotoShop...

Setup Grids to work in inches.

File->New

Name: Zones
Width: 11 inches
Height: 4 inches
Resolution: 300 pixels/inch

Select the Rectangle Tool.
On Toolbar select shape drop down and select Fixed Size, use 1in x 2in for Color Values
Use View->Show->Grid to display a grid over the image to make alignment easier.
Use Info pallet's X,Y coordinates to place the fixed size rectangle from 0,1 to 1,3 inches
In the layer palette, double click the layer name "shape 1" and name it "Zone 0"
Double click "Zone 0" layer's color box and enter RGB of 0,0,0.
Use Text tool to place centered text of "0" above the colored box for the zone and a "0" with "100%" below the box for the Value.

Repeat these steps for:
Zone 1 26, 90%
Zone 2 51, 80%
Zone 3 77, 70%
Zone 4 102, 60%
Zone 5 128, 50%
Zone 6 153, 40%
Zone 7 179, 30%
Zone 8 204, 20%
Zone 9 230, 10%
Zone 10 255, 0%

Use Rectangle tool to select all of the text layers of the zones. Then select the move tool to align top edges of adjacent layers or vertical centers.

Print this gray scale, on your printer, with the paper that you normally use for your black and white prints.

Your output should look like this:

You now have a very powerful photographic tool. When combined with the Digital Zone System your printed gray scale is better than any gray scale that you can purchase for determining what your prints will look like. Since it was created on your monitor using your monitor calibration, your printer profile, your inks, and your paper it truly represents the depth and range of outputs possible on your particular equipment.

Study this gray scale in print. Allow your eyes to ramble around the shades and possible paper textures. Perhaps in the future after enough use you will have memorized these values perfectly. With enough practice (approaching madness?) you can begin to see objects in the world at large as comprised of the luminance values which these shades represent.

A side question... Are the grays in your print truly gray? If you are not completely comfortable with your grayscale perhaps some calibration of your equipment is in order. But let's proceed, leaving calibration for other articles.

The basic math involved in the calculation of these numbers and percentages is as follows:

Also study this gray scale in PhotoShop in conjunction with the Info monitor (or the analogous software of your choice). Click on the ink droplet next to the CMYK display and click Grayscale on the popup menu. Your screen should then look like this:

In this particular example my mouse cursor was over Zone V which has a print density of 50%. Notice how the K value in the Info window measures 50%. By using the info window in this manner, as you roll your mouse over various portions of your photographs, you will be able to precisely detect the zone in which a particular portion of your image is rendering.

A second very powerful tool in applying the Digital Zone System is a notebook. And one of it's greatest benefits is that it will help you to slow down. What? I bought a digital SLR for greater immediacy! Why would I slow down? While we do get greater immediacy in terms of development and print times (in comparison to the length of times involved in traditional darkroom processes) reasoning, careful composition, and careful exposure are still necessary for making photographs. After all, digital photography is still photography, unless it is not. To deliberately produce a vision in print you must apply controls to the mechanisms very deliberately. You will use your notebook to record at least the image number or series of image numbers and the target values that you will learn to select below. I would also recommend the date and place be written down and space left for the writing of processing notes and discoveries.

A Zone corresponds to a stop on your spot meter. Each Zone represents a halving or doubling of light, or luminosity, just as a stop does on the camera. What we seek to do is map these meter values to zones which map to print values.

For a point of reference we use the camera's spot meter at 0 to represent Zone V assuming normal development. This implies that whatever film speed, shutter speed and aperture settings you use to get your meter to fall on 0 (or in the middle) will render in print (see your gray scale) as Zone V print tonality or your gray scale value 128. It doesn't matter what the subject is; your meter's computer doesn't have any idea nor does it know about your artistic vision, it just knows to recreate tonalities that fall at meter reading 0 as having an 18% reflectance or digital luminosity of 128.

Knowing this, with practice and technical mastery of your camera's controls, you can now visualize the values of your print before you make an exposure. Assuming normal development and calibration: Anything read by your meter that registers a +1 will fall on Zone VI. Anything read by your meter that registers a +2 will fall on Zone VII. Anything read by your meter that registers a -1 will fall on Zone IV and anything read by your meter that registers a -2 will fall on Zone III. Again it doesn't matter what the subject is, the machinery does not know how it's "supposed" to look, the photographer determines how the object will render in print.

If you place your meter on a dark shadow and adjust your film speed, shutter speed and/or aperture such that your meter reads +1, you will render a print tonality exactly like that of Zone VI on your gray scale. Your camera doesn't know that you are taking a picture of a shadow, nor does it know what a shadow is. It knows: plus 1 meter reading renders light tonality. That's all. It is completely up to the photographer to place objects in the tonalities that he or she desires.

To accomplish this, the general process that you will follow is to carefully study a scene and compare it's important elements to your grayscale. Allow your eyes to ramble and fall upon all of the objects within a scene and note the darkest and lightest areas. Begin to get a strong feeling for the important luminance values of the scene or object. Study the subject until you can create sentences that describe its photogenic qualities. Be able to say, "This object is remarkable because...

"This object or scene is remarkable because of the strong contrast created by the difference in luminance values between the shadow areas and the areas where the light is directly striking the object."

"This object or scene is remarkable because of the striking patterns of luminance values."

"This object or scene is remarkable because of the very few distinct luminance values it contains."

First, after your thorough study is complete, you will find an important element in the scene that you desire to place in a particular Zone for the upper luminance values, which you will place in the upper Zones (such as a highlight). You may want to pick the brightest object in the scene. Using the brightest object will help you to avoid "blown out" highlights. Most digital sensors, with which I have worked, are more prone to blowing out highlights than they are to losing shadow detail. The object in the scene does not necessarily have to look like the gray scale shade you choose. You are creating a photograph, not taking a picture. You will be "making" that object appear, or register, as the particular tonality that you choose for it. You will adjust your camera such that the object's meter reading registers a value that will produce the tonality you have chosen. You will then write down the object you metered, the meter reading and the zone on which you have attempted to place it. This is your base.

Secondly, you will also determine an element in the scene that is important to you, which has a lower luminosity, which you will place in the lower Zones. Without adjusting your camera from the highlight placement above, place your meter on this object and note the meter reading. Record in your notebook the object, the meter reading, the zone that meter reading maps to, and then... the zone on which you want to place that object to achieve your desired effect. This placement will occur during development of the digital negative, so do not adjust your camera further.

You can and should do this latter step for as many luminance values as you deem important.

Performing the reverse of this process is just as acceptable. If you find it helps your results to be more consistent, or if your camera is known to "block up" shadows with greater ease than it "blows out" highlights, you can use a lower luminosity as your base reading and adjust your camera accordingly to place the lower luminosity in the zone of your choice. You then use the higher luminosity, not to adjust your camera, but as the zone placement which will occur during development.

"Thus the essential rule: we can place any one luminance value on any zone of the exposure scale, and doing so will determine the camera exposure. We can then read other luminance values of the subject, and these will fall elsewhere on the scale of zones, with each one stop or 1:2 luminance change representing a one-zone difference."
Ansel Adams The Negative p59.

To help visualize how the other luminance values in your scene will appear in print we can start from the base reading and allow our meter to fall on other objects within the scene. Knowing where the meter falls, we can use our grayscale to visualize how that luminosity will render in print.

This process is the antithesis of taking a picture, this is making a photograph.

Back to the experiential elements of this article: As an "imaginary scene" we will use the gray scale print you created above to illustrate this process. Under diffuse lighting (no light directly falling on subject) prepare your camera to take a picture of the graphic you have made.

We will choose to place two values, the first on Zone VIII (base), and the second on Zone IV. Oh, I don't know... why don't we use the corresponding gray scale values for Zone VIII and Zone IV as our rendering intention? This will clearly demonstrate the relationship between the values you see and the values you place into Zones.

Place your camera's meter over the graphic of Zone VIII and adjust your controls such that your meter reads +2. Now move your camera's meter over the print tonality for Zone IV. As we discussed above, each zone is halving or doubling of light. Did your meter move 4 full stops to -2? How far did it move? Why? Much of your results of this depend on your particular equipment, the reflectance of the paper, and the lights under which you are working, again, a discussion I will save for another article. The important thing here is that we want to use the graphic for Zone VIII as our base reading and we want it to render in print tonality Zone VIII; thus we must adjust our camera such that our meter reads +2 when it is reading the graphic for Zone VIII.

In your notebook you might write:

It is important to note here that your choice of Zone placement will have a profound effect on your final image. It is the choices that are made at this stage that represent a small but significant portion of the art of photography. Trying to "push up" a highlight feature into Zone IX will affect both the number of tonalities that your print will be able to express and the flow or shift between the remaining tonalities.

Now, without adjusting your camera, place your meter over your secondary object, the printed tonality for Zone IV. Note the object, meter reading, and desired rendering of print tonality for Zone IV in your notebook.

In your notebook you might write:

If the secondary meter reading were "off the scale" we would rethink our approach. This might indicate a blocked up shadow which would render pure black; the printed page saturated with ink. We may indeed want this result if we were metering Zone 0. Perhaps it would be acceptable for an object which we would ideally place on Zone I. But we want to place this part of our scene in Zone IV and one look at the gray scale graphic you created, tells you that Zone IV certainly requires less ink than pure black. We may not have a choice sometimes. If we place objects in Zone IX at +2 meter reading and those are most critical to the photograph we may have to creatively compose or use blocked shadows or not take the picture and come back when the light is softer (dawn or dusk) or on an overcast day when the light is much more diffuse, or we may employ neutral density filters to bring the highlights of the scene within a lower zone closer to that of the shadows.

What can be done if other objects don't "fall" on the exact zones we desire? At this time it is important to mention Expansion and Contraction.

Expansion increases contrast. In PhotoShop you can think of expanding the space between the outer edges of the Levels guide and the slider. This is increasing development. We might perform this on a flat scene with a short luminance scale. What expansion does is "bring" more zones into a print. Where an image might only have represented 6 Zones of tonalities, after applying expansion it can contain many more, perhaps up to three more, Zones. This is most often performed on the digital photograph.

Contraction decreases contrast. In PhotoShop you can think of contracting the space between the outer edges of the Levels guide and the slider. This is reducing development. We might perform this on an image with a long luminance scale; a contrasty scene. What contraction does is "leave out" more zones from a print. Where an image might have contained 10 Zones of tonalities, after applying contraction it can contain far less, perhaps only 6 or 7 Zones. Normally we don't have to perform contraction on the digital positive because digital sensors are not yet dynamic enough to warrant such behavior. In PhotoShop Levels opens in a full contracted manner, so (assuming Levels is your first edit) you are usually working with a fully contracted image (N-X).

However we cannot apply either of these two principles without consequence. In traditional emulsions the consequence was often grain or fog in the final print. While these are not directly of consequence in the expansion or contraction of the digital photograph, there is a price in the form of zone shifts and/or noise. This also gives weight to the importance of our initial Zone placement. If we go too extreme, at the time of exposure, with the base placement, the rest of the image will be far to unruly to bring within acceptable values.

Expansion and Contraction are the forces behind the nomenclature of N+1 and N-1 development in the traditional Zone System. This is an adjustment in development time deviating from "Normal" development. The direct correlation between the Zone Systems may seem to break down here because in developing a digital positive there is no notion of "Normal" development. However if you look at your notes you will remember that we wanted to place the gray box representing Zone IV on Zone IV. Depending on your meter and camera the meter might not have read the gray box representing Zone IV as being within the scale of your meter, or it might have fallen, and probably did fall, on the meter in a disproportionate number of stops (would have been 4 stops in perfect conditions) from the base reading used for Zone VIII. If it fell to "the left" of where Zone IV would have been contraction is warranted. If it fell to "the right" of where Zone VIII would have been (but I doubt it) expansion is warranted.

In the Digital Zone System we can perform expansion and contraction for both highlight and shadow values, whereas the traditional Zone System could only perform expansion or contraction for the highlights.

If you have read this far, you really owe it to yourself to read Ansel Adam's instructional volumes: The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. He was both a better photographer and a better teacher than I. The volumes are filled with such profound insights into photography it's impossible to ignore in importance. Even in the digital age much of it is still very applicable as I have attempted to demonstrate through these articles.

Now expose your image of your grayscale and record the image number in your notebook alongside the few notes you made above.

You have not taken a picture; you have made an exposure.

We are now leaving the realm of the camera and exposure to begin work using The Digital Zone System Workflow.