The Gray Scale

Well hi all! it has finally gotten busy enough to start turning out projects!..:) half of which are not all that interesting, however. a good many of them involve gray cards, or gray scales.

This is a gray scale. it is used to find an exact tone of gry, and from there, as a photographer, I can adjust exposures to make my subjects any tone I wish! (muahahahaaaa!) This system was invented my Ansel Adams as a way to systemize tone depth. so if someone said "this looks like zone 6" then we could know what he means. each zone is one stop of light difference in exposure. if zone 5 is 1 second of exposure, then zone 6 is 2 seconds, and zone 4 is 1/2 sec. and in an ideal world we would get tones similer to these shown here (also here, are the photoshop equivilant for each zone)
zone 5 is also used for what is known as a gray card. this tone is what all meters and light sensors try to make. which is why if you take a picture of something that is pure white, it ends up looking grey if you rely on whate your meter says.