Customer Reviews

The Practical Zone System: For Film and Digital Photography

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is the current bible of the zone system. Everything you want and need to know about it for both film and digital.

But Focal Press once again comes through with crappy illustrations. The key to the zone system is being able to discriminate tones. The copy of the book I received has such muddy printing that it is impossible to see any difference between zones 0 to II and VIII and IX on the step diagrams provided. The black and white photos used for examples are equally muddy, making it difficult to follow the discussion in the text.

Text gets 5 stars, production gets 1, average = 3

This is one of the easier books to understand on the zone system. It does not get too tied up in the details of the system but describes enough detail to allow the reader to understand the basics of the system. This book is really targeted to someone who is not familiar with the zone system or who has studied it in more complex books and did not really comprehend the system. For this intended audience the book is right on target. It takes the complex issues of the zone system and removes the calculations and just gives you what you need to know. Think of it like the difference between an art teacher who says "Color the grass green" versus one who says "The grass must be green because chlorophyll absorbs the green portion of the light spectrum and so reflected light appears that color". If you just want to know how to use the system without a lot of detail behind why the system works then this is a good book selection for you.

This book is an excellent introduction to the Zone System. If you are looking to learn about the Zone System, it is hard to go wrong with this book. However, if you are somewhat familiar with the Zone System and are looking for more advanced info, this may not be the book for you. I had read Ansel Adam's book "The Negative" (which is an excellent book if you are looking for a bit more technical and in depth study) before this book so I felt that the book was a little simple. However, the thing I love about this book are the appendixes Chris includes. In them are a wealth of info for developing times for many developers and films, as well and a plethora of additional useful information. I also found the two testing methods Chris provided to be extremely accurate and useful. In summary, this is an excellent introductory book on the Zone System, and intermediate users will find the appendixes extremely useful. However, if you consider yourself an expert in the Zone System, I would not recommend this book. However, if you consider yourself an expert, you probably won't be looking for a book anyway.

This is a clear and excellent description of what the zone system is and does. Useful are the included tables for various film development times and chemicals. It is ironic however, that the litho plate print examples of the different zones are not executed carefully enough. Some of the examples of contrast look pretty much the same when compared to each other and therefore, are not useful examples. Perhaps the next edition will correct this oversight.

Absolutly easy to understand and read. Very well presented, and may well be the only book on Zone System you will ever need. For those wanting to delve into the chemistry of exposure, pass on this book. If you want to learn what the Zone system is and how it works, this book is great. "Everything you need, nothin' you don't"

I have found this book, The Pratical Zone System, by Chris Johnson to be the best book that I have read on the Zone System. It explains every detail of the Zone System. Some of the other readings that I have read on the subject make it a complicated system. Mr Chris Johnson's book is very easy to comprehend and it is very interesting. It also makes a great reference manual. Most important is that using the methods in the book you will get the the best results possible creating a photograph.

Anyone that is planing on using the zone system or is having trouble understanding the zone system will have all the problems resolved with this book. Joe Pica

This has got to be the easiest to read technical book ever written.In just a few hours you will be able to increase your exposure skills by 100%. This book will rid you of any second guessing about which exposure you should use. Follow the test sheets and see for your self. The zone system has never been easier to understand. All students or anyone interested in improveing their photographic skills must read this book!

Of the several books I have on Zone, this is by far the best and most easily understood. It's to the point, and has great examples, especially explaining the effects of development time.

I never developed a film in my life, but despite the fact that the original edition did not deal with digital photography and this book still talks a lot about film photography, this is one of the best most useful books on photography I've read so far. The author emphasizes important points by repeating them many times, so if you want to save some time I recommend reading this book in a different order. Start with Chapter 10, which is about Digital Photography. Most concepts are pretty intuitive and because this is the last chapter, he does not repeat them so much here. It is actually easier to see the important ideas in this chapter because he explains the differences between film and digital photography. Then read Appendix D because that's where he explains in more detail what makes digital photography different, i.e. why you expose for highlights and process for shadows in digital, instead of exposing for shadows and processing for highlights in film. Then go read Chapters 4 and 5 where the zone system is explained, now it will take you at most a couple of hours to finish these chapters since you pretty much saw it in Chapter 10. Play around with your camera as you read, it makes a lot of sense. Skip chapters 1,2 and 3; you will get bored before you get to the main point. Appendix A on Color Management is a must read!!! I am using Gimp to process my photos and I could never understand why the colors of my photos look different in gimp, in preview, in quick look, after applying g'mic filters, after uploading on flickr. I read a good book on gimp and it just glossed over Color Management, saying most people will never need to worry about this. Wrong. Most people need to understand it right away; and I didn't even start printing yet! The same with gimp documentation, no details at all! Anyway, after reading Appendix A, I selected my mac LCD display color profile as a monitor profile in gimp preferences (do not trust gimp to automatically select it!), changed color profile to Adobe RGB 1998 from a small color profile sRGB, and now everything looks great and consistent!

To summarize, it was a very informative great book! Just save your time and read in the order I suggested above.

This book is a waste of your time unless you have extensive experience with black and white film photography. For those working digitally, the author recommends reading Chapters 1 through 6 and then proceeding to Chapter 10. The first six chapters focus on black and white film exposure and development. Chapter 10 addresses digital. This progression is evidence of someone who knows little about teaching. Because the author apparently grew up on black and white film photography, the digital user is first required to learn everything the author knows about film photography so that the user can then understand how the author learned to convert his life lessons in film to a digital world. An excellent teacher would develop new analogies, stories, examples, and other ways of teaching for people who only know digital. The author's approach results in the absurd situation that in Chapters 1 through 6 you learn why your exposure bias should be for the shadows (Zone III), only to learn in Chapter 10 that in the digital world you bias should be for the highlights (Zone VII). That's the central message of the book.

Why should I waste my time learning about film development and high and low contrast photo paper? I am living in an inkjet world. Although I think the author is open to digital photography, his approach is evidence of a latent snobbery regarding the superiority of film to digital. That may still be true with black and white photography, but by every account I have read, it is not true when it comes to color--digital is better. Moreover, the availability of digital technology is making film photography a dying niche. The film folks had better accept reality, at least if they want to teach people who are coming of photographic age in the current enviroment.

Although the author claims he will not get into technical material, that is exactly what he does in Chapter 10. You read about scanning film negatives (again the bias toward film), Photoshop theory, bit depths, tone charts, etc. Bit depths strike me as largely irrelevant if you are shooting in RAW format, which I suspect most people who buy this book already are.

A far more productive book would contain 200 photos with the zones marked on each photo so the reader can begin to see how zones and color align in the real world. Under each photo would be a discussion of how the scene was metered and why. In other words, when I am walking down the street and want to take a photo of four people talking and they are in a park, what should I meter to get a good exposure? The grass, the sky, or their faces? Does it make a difference if they are light or dark skinned? What about if they are wearing mostly white clothes or colorful dresses? Suppose it is a bright sunny day or a cloudy day? Etc. etc