Do You Calculate Your Own Personal EI

Alan has touched on a point, it's all too easy to get confused reading different approaches.

There is a very simple practical way of implementing the Zone System which has formed the backbone of photo education in the UK for over 30+ years, it's easier than Adam's technique in "The Negative". Essentially it's the same approach used by John Blakemore, John Davis, Thomas Joshua Cooper, the late Fay Godwin, etc, and comes from the approach of Minor White who devised the Zone System along with Ansel Adams.

I first came across the approach on a workshop at Duckspool with Peter Goldfield and Peter Cattrell and have copies the page of notes somewhere. It important to remember that despite AA being known for the ZS much of his work was made before he and Minor White devised it and that in reality it's just a simple way of exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights.

Ian
 
If we believe that the job of photography is to take any scene and translate its brightness range, so that it fits exactly into the brightness range of a predefined grade of paper, all in one perfectly ordered workflow, avoiding all other interventions, then detailed testing is the way to go.
There may be occasions when this is desirable. Mapping the background radiation from the Big Bang is the kind of activity where immaculate accuracy is required. Remember, it was originally observed as a result of eliminating all possible errors, no matter how trivial, from observations of something else. Even pigeon droppings had to be taken into account.
My own suggestion is that we (or most of us) are not engaged in such an enterprise. We are bending the raw visual material that the the world provides, to our own ends.
If we believe we are making creative work, then if it looks right on the print, surely it is right. consequently, testing by printing must be more relevant to us than densitometer reading.
If someone finds that densitometry is fascinating, that is their own affair. I have no quarrel with enjoying peripheral activities; I have a friend who enjoys making his own fames. but he is also a very talented photographer.
Standardising on Grade Two seems perfectly reasonable. When we make an exposure, we may decide that the scene will fall outside the adjustments we can make by negative development and note that this image will need to be printed on a different grade. In short, we can think. In my view, we should all think.
 
Ian,
Minor White? The textbooks say AA and Fred Archer, the Wozniak of the Zone System. I had thought that Minor White was dealing with refinements, rather than originating.
I do agree that many favourite AA works were made without the benefit of the formal system. It seems that it was devised as a result of his teaching experience, and finding that naked densitometry was beyond the ken of his students. It would all have been conducted in clumsy Imperial units, which would have greatly increased their dismay.
(Do American photographers have a secret desire to re-join the British Empire? They do seem to cling to its wreckage in the measurements they use.)
Incidentally, Peter Cattrell has written an excellent basic textbook on photography. Before writing this, I looked at the index. Mercifully, under Z it says only Zoom.
It might be helpful to recount the Duckspool method, if you would be so kind.
 
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As this thread seems to be moving into interesting pastures new, I returned to Ian B's original post. He says "...although I would if I was fully confident..."
Might I suggest that the need for testing springs from a lack of confidence and that only testing gives it. We have been colluding to complicate things here.
Essentially, you expose some film, then you develop it. You do these things in several different ways and then you look at them. Whether you look through a densitometer, the Hubble telescope or simply by printing, doesn't really matter. If it yields a usable result, it will be a valid test.
 
Alan, no, I'm not saying it would be wrong to standardise on, say, grade 2 and develop film until it just showed a hint of tone when using dMax exposure. I think most of us have a target grade in mind when developing film. I tend to use a "suck it and see" approach, knowing that there is a bit of leeway in the Multigrade system. You are obviously much more scientifically motivated than me, and obviously get satisfaction from this. In my own defence I will say that I am very particular about taking film exposure readings in a consistent manner, and am quite precise in my film development methods.
I think the main point is this; if I was struggling to make decent darkroom prints, then I would turn to testing to help me standardise and solve the problem. As things stand, then I do feel that I have control, because I can utilise the built-in leeway in the Multigrade system.
Maybe we are both, in essence, doing the same things. I use as much control as I find necessary, and no doubt you so the same.

Alan
 
David M said:
Ian,
Minor White? The textbooks say AA and Fred Archer, the Wozniak of the Zone System. I had thought that Minor White was dealing with refinements, rather than originating.

It might be helpful to recount the Duckspool method, if you would be so kind.
Click to expand...

Minor White wrote the first Zone System Manual, he was taught the ZS by AA just after the war, and the book states it's a guide to the Ansel Adams Zone System of Pre-Visualization.

Ansel Adams and Minor White lived in the same San Francisco house from about 1946,for many years, so yes they refined the ZS together to the methodology we know today. They did this through use and teaching.

I'll dig out the A4 sheet, it's simple and logical, more importantly it works.

Ian
 
Turns out I haven't got the testing notes just the diagrams etc and the photocopy was stuck to a plastic sleeve and mostly been left on the sleeve !!!

Here's Peter Goldfields take on the Zone system . . . . . .

upload_2018-7-26_14-25-17.png

Peter had assisted Minor White in the US for a year who practiced Zen meditation :D

Ian
 
@David M - I don't find using a densitometer fascinating and I pretty much hate testing my materials because it takes a lot of time. But, over the years I have found, for me, that a few simple tests frees me to concentrate on making the kinds of pictures I wish to make. As Fred Picker used to say to us, "You need to get one foot on a rock!" I like knowing exactly how my materials respond which minimizes surprises. I totally agree that if the print looks right to you, then it's right. However, in my experience I have found that those who rattle on endlessly about the technical details of photography have never made an expressive print. Please understand that I'm speaking in general terms here and not directing that comment to anyone here.

@Alan Clark - your point is a very valid one and I think, perhaps, relates that point better than what I've written in this thread. It doesn't really matter how each of us works; if you're happy with your results, who is to say that you're doing it "wrong?" I don't aspire to the "suck it and see" approach because I'd hate to be in the presence of a wonderful subject in beautiful light and miss the mark!

@Ian G - I know that Minor White lived with Adams in the same house for a few years where he taught White his system of film exposure and development. I've read just about everything written about AA, including his autobiography, and I don't remember reading anything about he and White refining the Zone System together. Do you have a reference for this?
 
Alan9940 said:
@David M
@Ian G - I know that Minor White lived with Adams in the same house for a few years where he taught White his system of film exposure and development. I've read just about everything written about AA, including his autobiography, and I don't remember reading anything about he and White refining the Zone System together. Do you have a reference for this?
Click to expand...

I don't suppose there's a specific reference to it other than the plain and simple fact that it's not Ansel Adams who wrote the Zone System Manual first published in 1946, instead it was Minor white with whom he shared a house.

The reference would be in Minor white stating his book is a guide to the Ansel Adams Zone System of Pre-Visualization, thanking AA for his more than generous help in preparing the guide. However Minor White goes on to state thanks to John Le Davenport who wrote two articles on the concept of subject contrast control by varying film development, published in US Camera in 1934. There's also an implied comment that the fullness of Minor White's guide can be found in AA's Basic Photography Series of books.

So while AA & Archer may have taken Davenports concept further it's Minor white who's first articulating the Zone System fully in the Manual in a form that anyone can read and use.

Ian
 
More complicated than I had imagined. Isn't everything?
Zone...Zen looks like an extract from the famous Craftbook. I might have to dig out my dogeared copy.

Hmmm... Not quite the panacea I'd hoped for.
It says "The frame of the film that just has detail..." for establishing a personal EI and elsewhere he describes a version of using the Proper Proof method for establishing development.
 
Alan 9940,
My apologies if I seemed to be making personal references. I had no such intention. What you say makes perfect sense.
I have in mind a post on The Other LF Forum. Someone posted the usual request for advice on the "best" LF camera. As always, he wanted it to be light, rigid, compact, with huge bellows extension and full movements on all the standards. And cheap, of course.
This is not an uncommon request and he got the usual response: "What kind of things are you going to photograph?"
What made me remember him was that he claimed to have already already pinned down his exposures to a gnat's crotchet above FB+F. I don't quite know how he did this without a camera, but it imprinted him in my memory. To my mind he had put the cart before an infinite number of horses.
I wish I'd kept the reference.
 
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David, the Goldfinger Manual was put online by Martin R before he sold Silverprint, I can send you the PDF. or rather the link.

Peter Goldfield gave me a photocopied version in the late 1980's which is better than the SilverprintmPDF version. Peter was an excellent photographer, he switched to digital in the 1990's for the right creative reasons.

Ian
 
Ian,
I have both a paper copy and a PDF, but thank you all the same. Other members might care to see the state of photography in those pioneering days.
But it seems to be not quite same as the A4 sheet that Peter gave you. Presumably that was a little more detailed.
 
David M said:
I don't quite know how he did this without a camera, but it imprinted him in my memory.
Click to expand...

Well, over here in the states (and, probably from anywhere international, too) you can send unexposed film to Fred Newman of The View Camera Store for BTZS testing. He will expose the film for you (I believe on a copy stand), process it, then feed all the info into Phil Davis's programs. You will get back all kinds of graphs and charts providing everything you need to know about your film.

I've never used the service because I like doing things myself; and, I'm not sure I really trust it. How does it take into account internal camera flare? If the data comes back with a personal EI of 100 for a box speed 100 film, do I set my own personal light meter to 100? Will setting my own meter to 100 and exposing for Zone I give me ~0.10 above fb+f? I guess the bottom line, for me, is that I like using my own equipment when testing my materials.
 
All this seems a long way from getting a sore shoulder from the tripod.
It will certainly provide useful data for people who habitually make exposures of blank film on a copy stand – a very impersonal EI.
I suspect that those nice people at Ilford and Kodak might do this sort of thing from time to time between coffee breaks and they give you the information free with every box of film.
Let us believe that it's useful information. As Alan says, we would still need to take other factors – camera flare, the lenses we use, the accuracy of our shutters and our personal habits, before we have a useful working EI.
 
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