The Zone System

I think I've finally figured out how to use the zone system with my new camera. I learned photography on one of the original Nikon F's from 1959 which didn't have a built-in light meter. So I got very used to the incident light reading from my external light meter. I almost always shot better pictures than my classmates (at least before they learned the zone system) because the light meter didn't lie to me. Now I have a Panasonic LC1 with a built in light meter (of course, it's a digital camera) so I want to learn to take great pictures with it (of course, I spent a lot of money on it).

This is what I've been doing:

1. Set the white balance to B&W (it's easier to learn about light and how your camera sees it in B&W)
2. Set the meter style to 'spot' (it puts a tiny '+' in the middle of the screen so I can take acurate readings from small objects)
3. Set the F-stop dial to a manual setting. I would start with the lowest if I was indoors, the highest if I was ourdoors and it was sunny (not likely since it's december in Seattle), and somewhere in between. (Of course, you could set the shutter speed here instead if you wanted shutter priority)
4. Set the shutter speed dial to 'A' and press the shutter button half way while pointing at your subject. Your computer with a lens, uhhh, I mean camera, will then tell you what shutter speed (or aperature if you did the opposite) would be appropriate if your subject is middle grey.
5. Now move the shutter speed dial the number of steps difference between middle grey and your subject's zone. If you are shooting something that you visualize in zone 7 and your camera displayed 1/60 then set it to 1/250 and you'll be all good. Don't forget the law of reciprocity, it's your friend during this step.

Now practice this. Take lots of pictures. The LCD monitor in the back of your camera helps a lot with seeing how the picture turned out. The best thing to try is to take pictures of each of the zones with exactly what the meter tells you to use. It would be especially nice to use a solid sheet or screen full of that color. I think this exercise helps you understand your camera better. When you are done view your pictures in the gimp or photoshop and use the color picker tool to see what shade of grey your picture is made of. Most likely all of your pictures will be around 128/255. Interesting, no?

Now that I've wrapped my brain around this I'm going to try to figure out how to take multiple zone readings and incorporate them into one photo.