Weichold
Have I understood the following correctly:
I meter an object using a spot meter. The shadows fall in Zone III, the highlights in Zone VIII. With a negative, I would set the exposure time according to Zone III.
I once read that with transparency film, you should do the opposite. So in this example, I would then expose the transparency according to the exposure time for Zone VIII. Is that correct?
RonnyW
Hello,
I’m not a Zoni, so I can’t really answer your question. But why make it so complicated?
With slides, I look for the part of the image that should be reproduced neutrally and measure it using the spot meter. If necessary, you can then measure the shadows and highlights that are still supposed to have detail, and check whether these fall within the range of +/- 2EV. If not, you have to decide what’s more important and correct accordingly.
John Shaw, for example, describes this in more detail and with greater precision in his books.
Best regards, Ronny
ThomasLoos
I’ll make it even simpler ;-) I use the centre-weighted TTL metering on my F1N...
Now, the exposure latitude isn’t very wide with slides.
If the subject falls within the exposure latitude, you basically meter for the mid-tone exposure value; whatever is brighter or darker than that will appear on the slide. If that doesn’t work out – which often happens – you usually meter so that the highlights still retain detail. The basic rule when photographing slides is therefore: meter for highlights, not for shadows as you would with negatives. If in doubt, it’s better to underexpose than overexpose.
When projecting, blown-out highlights or overexposed slides are far more noticeable than washed-out blacks and underexposed slides.
Of course, you can certainly work even more precisely with the zone system and spot metering. It might pay off if you’re shooting on sheet film or something similar. You don’t absolutely need it, though; I hardly ever get any exposure errors myself.
Best regards, Thomas
Wolfgg
Zoni doesn’t expose for the highlights or the shadows; instead, he knows his film’s characteristic curve! This means that, with negative film, he knows exactly how much light is just enough to produce the first usable density, and how much light produces such a strong density that almost pure white appears on his paper afterwards. With slide film, it is exactly the opposite: he knows exactly how much light is required to just touch the deepest black and how much light makes the slide almost completely transparent. He then assesses the contrast of his subject and considers which parts should appear how bright in the final image, which parts might need to disappear completely into black on the slide, which can become completely transparent, and which parts are crucial to the image and must absolutely fall in the middle of the characteristic curve. Or, in the case of low-contrast subjects on slide film, whether the subject needs to be shifted slightly to the right on the characteristic curve (overexposure) so that it appears better in the projection, etc. The Zoni does not determine the exposure time across the board according to a specific zone.
Regards, Wolfgang
