What if I am not shooting RAW?

You don’t have to shoot RAW to use the zone system; it is applicable to any photographic medium.  However, the available dynamic range will be smaller.  Here are the zone rulers made from the Nikon’s RAW images as previously illustrated:

-II

-I

O

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

Here is the zone ruler made from the same exposures, this time using the .jpg rather than the RAW (.nef) files:

O	I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII

The dynamic range between black and white is only seven stops.  And this seems like a good time to revisit the zone system myths described in the previous section:  if you are shooting .jpg or .tif, your images will not fit the “zone system = 10 zones” mold.  Putting what is intended to be textured highlights on zone VIII, for example, will simply not work.

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