Zone System, simplified - Farzad's 5-stop approach
Excerpts from The Simplified Zone System Book

Why this book?  |  The Author |  Back Cover  |  Sample Pages   |  Appendix
Reviews  |  Ordering |  Gallery|

e-mail address:

Chapter 3 Sample page:

3.6. Let's photograph our first complex subject.
The snow covered cottage on the next page will be our first complex subject to analyze and photograph.
In this specific subject, we have three distinct tones, the snow, the walls and the door. For illustration purposes, every one of these three subjects (surfaces) can be considered a simple subject.
In each of these three examples, we choose one of these tones as the Reference Tone. Then by determining the correct exposure for this tone, we have determined the correct exposure for the entire subject.
To do this you need to match the Reference Tone with one of the five tones of the Tone-Ruler. It is up to you to select the "wall," the "door," or the "snow" as your Reference Tone. Once you have matched the Reference Tone with a tone on the Tone-Ruler, the rest is easy.
For some people (myself included), the hardest part of this process is to match the Reference Tone with one of the tones on the Tone-Ruler. If you are like I am and having a hard time with this technique, try the negative logic that I use.
To illustrate, let's use the wall as our Reference Tone.
When using this technique, we always start with 5 tones. The reasoning goes something like this:
Since the wall is not black, we are left with 4 other choices.
Since the wall is not white, we are left with 3 other choices.
Since the wall is not dark gray, we are left with 2 other choices.
Since the wall is not 18% gray, we are left with 1 other choice.

By default, our only remaining choice is the 36% gray tone. Therefore, we will assign the 36% reflectivity to the wall.
To expose the complex subject properly, we simply measure the normal exposure for the wall and open-up one stop (brighten-up the 18% image tone to 36%). You can use this "reverse" logic to any simple tone that you see around you to determine its approximate exposure.
Please remember that you will make mistakes in the beginning. It will always help to keep notes! As you practice, you will become increasingly skilled at placing tones into their appropriate reflectivity on the Tone-Ruler.