Zone system

[Actor]

you've just given yourself the very best reason in the world for popping for a bulk loader and some reuseable film cassettes. Go ahead and load them with short runs of, say, 6 exposures. Shoot and process as required.

Piece of cake.

You could load them for single exposures. That would take about one foot (30 cm) per frame. It may seem like a waste of film but, if my math is correct, you'd still be shooting less film per frame than with 4 x 5 sheets. With 120 film you could probably cut your own paper backing and stick one 6 x 6 to it.

 

[davidkachel]

For 120 film, expose a whole roll to anything at all, then develop it.

For 6x7, the distance from either end of the roll to the middle of the second frame is the same as the distance from the middle of the second frame to the middle of the third frame.
So just get some pieces of mid-weight cardboard (that is, not easily bent by accident) and measure out pieces that are one exposure long (from the end of the roll to the middle of the second frame), two exposures long (from the end of the roll to the middle of the third frame), etc. REMEMBER, that when you unroll the film, you are at the END of the roll. Reverse it before you start measuring to cut for development of real exposures.

Then if you shoot three frames for N+1 and need to change to N-2, skip frame 4 and start shooting at N-2. Take notes of what you did for how many frames, and use the appropriate template and a pair of scissors in the darkroom to cut through the middle of the skipped frames and develop the segments separately. You have to miss by greater than 50% to ruin a negative. It never happened to me.

If you shoot 6x6 or 645 you may need two sets of templates, one for cutting from the end of a roll and another for cutting from a previously cut segment. I never used those formats so have never thought about it before now.

Cut notches into the sides of all templates on both ends to indicate how many frames each template represents so you can easily pick them out in the dark. Two notches = two frames. Cut a notch into each end if the template is for cutting from the end of a roll for which you need two sets of templates (6x6 or 645).

This is much harder to explain than to do. Once you start measuring pieces of cardboard, you'll see it right away. It is as simple as loading film onto reels. One set of templates will last you as long as it takes cardboard to disintegrate with time.

You can do the same thing with 35mm but it is more tedious because of the smaller size and the fact you can't depend on the leader length being exact so you may run into problems but the most number of frames you can damage with each cut is one.

I did not use this method with 35mm, mostly because I didn't shoot 35mm, but when I did I would keep notes on what kind of images I had on the roll and pick a development time that on average gave me the best results for most of the negatives on that roll.

And for whoever said, 'you can just change paper contrast' or something along those lines... no; if that were the case and if contrast were the only thing at stake, the Zone System would have been largely unnecessary. Go to my web site: David Kachel Photographer, click on the history button and read the article titled "The Primacy of Local Contrast". There are others there you should read also, but that one is a good start.

The short version is that film and paper change contrast in different ways for different uses. Graded papers existed long before the Zone System so the argument that graded papers replace the Zone System is unsupportable.

 

[Dwig]

One of the criticisms you hear about the zone system is that you really cannot use it with 35mm and 120 film ...

Additionally, you seem to misunderstand the criticism and hence word your statement backwards. The criticism is not against the Zone System, its against roll film. You statement should be worded:

"One of the criticisms you hear about 35mm and 120 film is that it is difficult to use the Zone System when shooting these formats"

The workaround is to use multiple film backs (120) or multiple bodies (35mm), one for normal processing and one each for +1 and -1.