Hello! 👋 

I hope you had a wonderful weekend.

I was able to get out of the city 🏙️ for a few days, which was nice. But which camera did I take? 🤔

I decided to take a break from the Argus and bring the Yashica Mat 124G, with some Kodak Portra 400. TLRs are always fun.

For today we’re talking about:

1. 🐢 Slow shutter speeds.

2. ⛄️ The challenges of snow….how Zone VII can help.

🐢 Slow shutter speeds.

Usually we use a slower shutter speed when we’re in a low light environment and need to capture more light. But there is another time to use a slow shutter, and that’s to smooth over flowing water. 🌊 

Waves, waterfalls, running streams all have movement, and a faster shutter speed freezes that movement. Usually it’s not what we want. Instead we want that nice glassy look to the water. A slow shutter on a tripod can achieve that.

The photo of the creek above, was taken with Portra 400 on a Yashica Mat 124G. I wanted the water to be very smooth so I set the shutter speed to be 1/4th of a second. Looking this photo now, I wish I went even slower, maybe a ½ or even 1 second.

So why didn’t I?

There was too much light! At 1/4th I was already stopping the aperture down to f22. Going slower would have started to exceed to the capabilities of the camera (the aperture can only be so small). Even though it wasn’t very sunny, the snow acts as a big reflector. So what can you do?

There are two ways I could have addressed this:

1. Use a lower ISO film, such as Portra 160.

2. Use an Neutral Density (ND) filter. There are different strength ND filters available. For example a 2 stop ND filter would of let me keep the aperture and film ISO the same and shoot at 1 second. Same exposure, but smoother water. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t have either of those things. 🤷‍♂️ I’m still happy with how it turned out.

⛄️ The challenges of snow…how Zone VII can help.

This is a big topic—so big that you could write a whole book about it (which Ansel Adam’s did 😁). I’m talking about Ansel Adam’s Zone System. His system helps you have precise control over your exposure and tonal detail. I’m not going to cover everything here, but enough to peak your interest and some places where you can learn more.

What is the Zone System?

The Zone System is a way to divide a scene into different spots on a tonal range. There are 11 zones. Zone 0 is pure black and Zone X is pure white. Every zone in between is a shade of grey, with Zone V being middle grey. Moving in between zones is increasing or decreasing the exposure by one stop of light. So going from Zone V to VI is doubling the amount of light, or increasing by one stop.

Let’s talk about middle grey

All light meters, whether hand held or built into your camera are calibrated to middle grey (18% grey). This means using the exposure settings provided by your light meter will produce an exposure of middle grey. This is an important concept, and I still have trouble fully wrapping my head around it.

It doesn’t matter what color the object is in real life, if you meter for that object it will look middle grey in your picture. If you don’t believe me you can try this out for yourself. The easiest way is to use a digital camera and take a picture of a white piece of paper, using the exposure settings recommended by the camera. That white piece of paper will look grey. You can do the same with a black piece of paper. It will look grey. It will actually look the same as the photo you took of the white piece of paper. 🤯 

Getting back to snow 🌨️ 

For this image, I really wanted the snow to look like…snow. Remember that what my meter says will produce middle grey. Had I metered the snow and used those settings, I would have had ugly grey snow.

Instead, I metered the snow and I decided that I didn’t want that spot in the scene to be Zone V, but instead Zone VII, a 2 stop difference. So I took the exposure settings from the meter and added 2 stops to it. f22 at 1/16th of a second, became f22 at 1/4th. It doesn’t have to be the shutter speed that you adjust. I could of gone from f22 at 1/16th to f11 at 1/16th. Exposure is the same, but the water wouldn’t be as smooth.

Like I said, it’s a lot to wrap your head around. 😵‍💫 Thinking in terms of the zone system is by no way second nature for me, and I definitely make mistakes, but it’s a worthwhile concept to learn. It can really improve your photography. Particularly, for subjects that can trip up your light meter, like snow.

Some resources:

• Kim Hildebrand has a great blog post on the zone system and snow.

• There is Ansel Adams’ book, The Negative.

• Nick Carver has a very in depth course on light metering. He covers the zone system in detail, as well as his own spin on it.

• Kyle McDougall has a nice YouTube video where he breaks down images and discuss the zone system.

Alright that’s going to do it for today. I’ll see you next week! 🫡 

Get out and turn a snowy negative into a snowy positive.

Ben Henschel

📷️ Yashica Mat 124G / 🎞️ Kodak Portra 400