I think Wolfie explained the concept very well! The concepts do not change. Thank you, Michelle, for the beautifully exposed teddie. It looks (on my monitor) that Zone III is precisely on the nose, (I couldn't resist!). Some of the highlights in the fur, and the edge rim of the eye, are around VIII or IX. Exactly as they should be. The histograms are also about what I would expect for a perfectly exposed photo. No big spikes down around 0, or up around 255. The BIG Question: How easy is it to use the little LCD finder to determine if you've really captured the shadow and highlight detail you want? I'm not really suggesting that folks ALWAYS use the histograms in the field. That would be sort of a pain in the butt. In tricky lighting situations, however, it seems like the histogram is a nifty tool. If you see that pixel values were bunching up at either end, you could adjust the exposure some to play "safer." In the teddy picture, there seems to be quite a lot of room at the high end, and the shadows are just slightly starting to bunch up. A "safer" strategy would maybe be to increase exposure here by 1/2 to 1 stops, (until you start getting a big spike at 255). This would give some insurance that you've captured enough detail in the shadows. BUT! Even though safer, it would be the WRONG exposure. Increasing by one stop would place everything one Zone higher. Doing a straight print of this then would look far different from your previsualization. So, what you'd like to do is make a note in the field that you compensated by one stop, and then later in Photoshop darken to return to your previsualization. This seems entirely consistant with Wolfie's statement, "The zone system is based on the knowledge of the recording and print media's tonal range and contrast range, placing the exposed image within that range to achieve the desired result." What is nifty about the digital cameras is that you can determine exactly, at the time of exposure, if every significant image element is within the recording media's tonal range. If it is not, you can compensate the exposure, and then later in Photoshop exactly remove the compensation. The statement, "Washed out highlights with transparencies will be forever that - washed out - there's no density there to correct." Would translate into digital media as, "Values falling at 0, or at 255, are forever lost, there is no density there to correct." A nifty digital camera feature would be an "out of range" LCD display. Everything around level 0 shown as bright purple, and everything around 255 as bright yellow. And then a "thumbwheel" to compensate the exposure. Then, I'd like the thumbwheel setting to be recorded with frame information.