• Adobe After Effects

  Translating F-Stops and the Zone System to Digital

  Posted by Max Jackson on July 28, 2010 at 3:39 am

  If somebody were to ask me to drop a certain shot by a full stop say below Zone V how would that translate into Brightness/Contrast the hexadecimal system, or even more so levels and curves?

  Is there a system to translate the analog process of aperture to digital?

  Steve Roberts replied 15 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Steve Roberts

  July 29, 2010 at 11:58 am

  An f-stop is double or half the amount of light. An f-stop over is twice as bright, and f-stop under is half as bright. The Zone system is based on f-stops, so Zone IV is half as bright as Zone V, which is half as bright as Zone VI. Zone V is middle gray, the same as an 18% reflectance gray card, which some quote at R=G=B 117 for gamma 2.2.

  However … regarding RGB, apparently Lee Varis sets the R=G=B values at this, for zones 0 to 100:
  0-33-51-72-94-118-143-169-197-225-255.

  Now if you’re a really anal Zone guy, you might want to do your own densitometer/paper testing as gamma (among other things) are an issue. Your mileage may vary.

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