Loch Duich is one of Scotlands most magnificent sea lochs. With mountains towering above the inlet and the most photographed (real) castle in the world, Eilean Donan, on its shores this lake is a photographer's paradise.
I found myself there a couple of years ago and enjoyed loads of great photography with my Nikon FM2N. In this post I wanted to talk about this particular beautiful scene.
We'd walked along the far shore of the loch, opposite the famous Eilean Donan castle for a few miles. It felt as though we had the whole loch to ourselves. As we rounded a small headland, I saw this house and jetty complete with sailing boat moored in the background. The peaceful scene called out to my camera, but the lighting challenged any automatic meter.
My exposure technique has always been Ansel Adams "Zone System". I first heard of Adams when very young. My father talked of Adams' "Zone System". He'd complain at how complicated it was. At that young age I never understood the complex theory of zones and exposure but I'd gaze upon those Ansel Adams landscapes in awe. But, as I later found, the technique is not at all complicated! Ansel Adams left us a gift. He left us a method of exposing, developing and printing that all but guarantees good results. Through the years I've learned the beauty and simplicity of this system. It has provided me with the easiest negatives to print and an awareness of how we can fit so much light into so small a negative "space".
The Zone System, at its simplest, describes two photographic essentials. First, that your negatives and paper have very limited dynamic range and cannot reproduce the range of light we observe. Second, that we can expose and develop in a way that 'fits' what we see onto our imperfect negative and paper media. From Adams we learned that by taking care of the shadows we will print details in those darker parts of the scene and by using careful development for the highlights we will tame them bringing them down into a printable range.
The Zone System doesn't ensure that all the shadows will show detail or all the highlights will be nuanced, in fact, that would make for a rather flat and unpleasing print and I always print to have some true black and some paper white to provide a nice contrast.
Exposing for the shadows
My experience has always confirmed the teachings of Adams, that a negative with five stops between the shadows and the highlights will maintain enough important detail and be easiest to print. With that in mind, we first examine our scene and decide which is the darkest part that needs detail and which is the lightest. With black and white film you start with the darkest part, the shadows, these are the focus for your exposure. I looked at the scene above and decided the prominent shadows in front of the cottage needed detail. This meant they didn't become featureless black. With my camera's meter I measured the near shadows (I simply walked up to them to fill the frame for the reading). This gave me 1/320 @ F2.8. Now, this reading would render the shadows near medium grey, which is exactly two stops too bright for detailed shadow so I closed down the lens two stops from that reading to 1/320 @ F5.6. Now I knew the shadow detail would be exposed correctly and print well.
That's how to take your exposure, measure the shadows and close down two stops with either your aperture, your shutter speed or a combination of both.
Then I looked at the scene and examined the highlights. I realised the highlight problem would be detail in the roof of the house. The sun was bouncing off that roof and it could easily become burned out in my print. A featureless white roof would look awful. I therefore metered the roof and found it measured 1/1280 @ F16, six stops brighter than the shadow (1/320 @ F5.6 to 1/1280 @ F16 = six stops). I wrote this down in my notebook. The scene was presenting a six stop range which was too much for printing (remember the maximum is five stops) so I'd deal with that problem later, in the development of the film.
Develop for the highlights
At home I studied my notes from the day's shoot. This scene of Loch Duich was my focus for the film. In order to create a good print from this six stop scene I needed to bring the negative down to the 5 stop printable range. Put another way, I needed to reduce highlight development time by one stop. To achieve that I would use my D-23 stock and develop for 30% less than my normal development time. This contracts the six stops I captured in the five stops I needed. It would bring down the highlights only, without affecting the shadows, and help me achieve a good print. My book covers this in more detail and explains why and how this works. It also explains how to expand the contrast range of the film for flat days.
Conclusion:
Ansel Adams taught us that before taking a photograph we need to visualise the scene and understand the light. By understanding the range of light, from shadows to highlights and deciding where we want printable details to be, we can expose and develop effectively making our printing easier. By slowing down our photography at the point of capture we speed up results we get in the darkroom.
I invite you to comment below on your experiences with the Zone System, ask questions, or give feedback on my technique.