Panasonic’s EL Zone exposure method

nutmegger said:
Ed Lachman ASC has devised a cinema version of Ansley Adams’ Zone System exposure method for VariCam cameras. Looks interesting.
Enjoy.
Click to expand...

Ansley Adams? Is that Ansel's younger brother?
I'd like to have 30 minutes with Mr. Lachman to show him the simplicity, speed, and accuracy of using zebras. It need not be any more complicated than that. If good old Ansley had had zebras back in the day, he'd have used them too. :)
 
Doug Jensen said:
Ansley Adams? Is that Ansel's younger brother?:)
Click to expand...

As someone who has a copy of Ansel’s Moonrise Over Hernandez hanging on my den wall, you would think I would know how to spell his name. Auto correct causes more problems than it fixes. ;-)
 
Easy to make a mistake like that, but I just couldn't resist taking advantage of it. I have always liked Moonrise, but I have a special edition print of Evening, McDonald Lake. Glacier National Park hanging in my office.
 
Of course this brings up the inevitable comparisons between film and digital -- since a major component of the use of the zone system related to custom-developing each negative differently to optimize the dynamic range and contrast of the negative. Thus a shot of a lower contrast subject might be processed longer to create a higher contrast negative (since otherwise there would be wasted zones), while a shot with more dynamic range might be processed to achieve a lower contrast negative to make sure that it captured good detail in both the darkest and lightest areas.

Perhaps the digital equivalent of the process would be to adjust the gamma of each shot separately.

I suppose this is very much like the concept behind shooting Log or Raw in terms of preserving maximum amounts of information in both highlights and shadows -- but imagine being able to adjust the dynamic range of Log for each shot!

And of course we shouldn't forget that many of the famous stills images involve a large amount of dodging and burning in multiple areas - a bit like adding numerous custom 'power windows' to every shot during the color correction/timing phase.

On the other hand, as near as I can tell the EL zone system is just another organized way to use False Color as an exposure tool, and not a system to custom adjust the dynamic range of the digital capture for each shot.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top