You Cannot Master Exposure Without A Basic Understanding of the Zone System

Today I want to help you take the first set to fully undersigned exposure. I teach lots of people photography. Sometimes it lighting, sometimes it general camera information. Exposure seems to be one of those items that people seem to just walk right past. They seem to figure if they can take a picture, look at the LCD, make an adjustment, take another, then repeat until they get what they want, that life is good. For me that spray and pray stuff is garbage. You are doing yourself and the craft of photography a disservice. So I want to make this super simple today.

The Zone System as seen by the chart I created above is a simple system that lets you predict exposure. It’s a system of measurement from 100% black with no detail to 100% white with no detail with all of the shades of grey in between. This system shows you exactly what is going on in your viewfinder. Instead of the little boxes with shades of grey, you see -3..-2..-1..0..1..2..3. I promise you, it’s exactly the same thing, you just don’t know it.

When I say you cannot master exposure without a basic understanding of The Zone System, what I mean to say is you need to understand the basic principles and how they apply to exposure. The Zone System was developed for film but it works exactly the same for digital, except for one thing. With film you expose to the shadows in camera, and develop the highlights in post (the darkroom with chemicals). Where in digital you expose for the highlights in camera and develop the shadows in post (software to push down the blacks).

With digital, to get exposure right, you need to set the exposure so that whatever is white in the scene looks white, yet still has detail. An example would be you are shooting a bride with a white dress, you want the dress to look white. Not so white that the details in the dress are gone. Remember 100% white is without any detail. I will say this again, you will have achieved proper exposure when white objects look white and still have detail.

The rest is simple, all you have to do is let everything else in the scene just fall in place. Skin tones, hair color and everything else will be properly exposed and look as it should (except for blacks). Depending on the scene, a camera does not have enough dynamic range to render a scene with, “Full Range”. Full Range means a scene that has 100% black information as well as 100% white information. So, for the blacks to look right in am image taken with whites that are properly exposed, all you have to do is drag a slider in post, it’s really that simple.

Watch the video below to see it in action. In the video, I give you all the tools you need to fully master exposure, watch it and re watch it until you get it. I promise everything you need to know is there. Once you master the concept, you will never wonder why your camera is not getting it right. You will also know exactly what to do to fix any exposure problems.

Sorry for the long post, I hope you get something out of it. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Sincerely, Thomas Shue