Kens Photography Blog

The Zone System, developed by Ansel Adams is the most important thing I ever learned in photograhy, and I urge any new photographer to learn it to.

Knowing how to use the Zone System means that you can look at any scene and expose the important parts just how you like them. No more over or under exposed images, no more blown highlights or clipped shadows, unless you want to do that of course. The important thing is that the Zone System puts you in charge, not your camera.

The Zone System has 2 parts, one is for the exposure in the camera, the other is for development of the image in the darkroom. In the digital world we only need to concern ourselves with the camera part. This makes learning the Zone System much less complex.

First we need to know what happens when we adjust for correct exposure in our camera.

Point your camera at a subject, adjust the exposure so the meter is in the middle of the scale. What your camera has done now, is make the subject 18% gray. Make sure you understand this, as this is the basis for using the Zone System.

Here comes the hard part, memorizing the 11 Zones. Realy, once you have them filed away in that brain of yours, you’r home free, so lets have a look at them.

• 0 Pure black
• I Near black, with slight tonality but no texture
• II Textured black; the darkest part of the image in which slight detail is recorded
• III Average dark materials and low values showing adequate texture
• IV Average dark foliage, dark stone, or landscape shadows
• V Middle gray: clear north sky; dark skin, average weathered wood
• VI Average Caucasian skin; light stone; shadows on snow in sunlit landscapes
• VII Very light skin; shadows in snow with acute side lighting
• VIII Lightest tone with texture: textured snow
• IX Slight tone without texture; glaring snow
• X Pure white: light sources and specular reflections

So now you’r probably thinking “What the hell is this and how is this usefull?”

Remember what happened when you exposed on something and adjusted the exposure so the meter was in the middle?

Yep, you made that subject 18% gray, and that just happens to be – you guessed it… Zone 5.

Is a bell ringing right now? No? Ok, lets see how we can use this knowledge.

You are taking a picture of the sky with fluffly clouds. You expose for the clouds as those are the most important part as you envision this scene.

So now your fluffy clouds are put into zone 5, and we don’t want gray clouds, just like we don’t want no yellow snow.

Now we make a decision, we want those clouds to be bright, but we want to see the texture in them, what zone is that?

Sounds like a Zone 8 to me. Right now we are at zone 5, so we over expose by 3 stops and take the photo and those clouds are just bang on the money.

Another example:

You are taking a photo of a nice treeline. You expose for the treeline putting it into zone 5. We don’t want gray trees. We know there’s shadows in there under the branches and we want to see them, what zone might that be?

Zone 4 sounds good or 3 if you wanted those shadows to be a bit more gloomy.

Using zone 3, we now have to underexpose by 3 stops since we used them as the achor when adjusting exposure, and that puts the shadows right where we wanted them.

See how you can now look at any scene and decide where you want to place things to get the mood you want?

It takes a while to learn all the zone in the zone system, but once you do you will find a new freedom from whatever your camera manufacturer has decided is best for you.

One last thing. It’s best to put your cameras metering mode into the most narrow mode, that’s useually “Partial mode” or Spor metering mode. Every camera calls this something different so check your manual for the mode that puts the most weight into the middle of the scene.