I have been reading about Ansel Adam’s zone system for achieving correct exposure in camera. One of the clickin moms swears it has totally transformed her SOOC images. When I read some tutorials, it totally made sense to me and explained why I often have to either adjust my exposure off zero in camera or in post processing. The theory is that you spot meter a tone in the average (18% gray) range to get perfect exposure throughout the image (something my Nikon system is supposed to do for me with matrix metering, as I understand it). My problem is what to do when the tone isn’t average.
Red is supposed to be an average tone, so I metered to zero- and it was overexposed. When I metered it a stop under zero, it was correct. This is SOOC, except for the watermark. I decided that it was a darker red, so it was really zone 4- and that was why it all worked. I was very proud of myself!
That was the last photo I took where I felt I knew what I was doing.
I thought that if a flower was Zone 4, you metered by spot metering the flower and adjusting the dials until the needle pointed to one stop less than zero. And if the flower was zone 6 (lighter), you would meter to +1. That doesn’t seem to be working for me! I then reversed my meter display, so that it would match the histogram and my zone system cheatsheet. That has only confused me more. I don’t know if I have things backward or not. My brain is exploding!
The system is working for me when I meter something in the average tones- green grass! Woot! But, other than that, mixed results.
melinda anderson photography 
Wow, gorgeous. And I thought the Zone system you mentioned was a new, digital thing, not an Ansel Adams method. Looks like you achieved your goal. This is lovely, the colors look spot on and how ironic that you’re using a “zonal” geranium so experiment with the zone system.
NICE…………………………