Command Line Interface ~ Linux

I never knew it was "punk" to use a Command Line Interface, but it appears to be so. 

Once the idea struck, it became clear that, yes, indeed, I am increasingly anti-GAFAM (Google Amazon Facebook Apple Microsoft).  OK, so this blog is hosted on one of the GAFAM systems, but this can rectified at a time of my choosing.  Cell phone?  Yes, that too can change.  The tablet can change.  The Big Computer was for a very short period of time running a techno-tyrannical operating system, but most of the time for the past 30 years has been liberated.  It's a matter of effort.

Once I understood a little better the history of punk I could re-frame, re-context the contents of the prior paragraph.  Punk started as a youth movement that responded to arrogant "elite" class Thatcher-ism in the UK.  The US version of punk was something a little different.  It dealt with right wing politics and capitalism.  In both cases punk was a reaction to Bad Things perpetrated by "elite" powers far removed from the experiences of everyday people.  

GAFAM power is even greater than what the original punks responded to starting in the 1970's.  Techno-tyranny is extra-political and trans-national.  It determines what exists and what does not, what is remembered and what is not, what is acceptable and what is not, and it imposes a value system easily consumed by the masses.  Significant portions of the system is "free."  Whatsapp, Facebook, Blogger (the site I write this on), Gmail, Yahoo mail, Twitter (yes, I know it's newer name), Amazon, FaceTime, iTunes, etc, etc, etc on the surface and at first blush cost nothing.

The "costs" are carefully hidden from users.  Many (most?) "free services" on the internet are synonymous with loss of privacy, intrusive data collection, buying/selling of data, leading to a state of shockingly efficient, nearly seamless techo-tyranny means these services are anything but free.  Ads tailored just for our eyes are the least of it. We so quickly accept this as "the way things are" that we become numb to this truth.  Of course none of this is for our liberation, rather for our compliance and sheep-like acceptance.

I'm reminded of the early days of what later evolved into the internet.  We dug for information and knowledge using Gopher.  We spoke rather freely with each other via (unscanned for advertising opportunities) email (hosted on small systems), held community conversations on (largely troll-free) discussion forums and bulletin boards (both commonly hosted on small systems), and read news on something called Usenet.

It felt more like we were moving into a future of our shared creation, rather than a narrowly offered present imposed on us.  Freedom and liberty vs corporate tended bubbles of narrowed for our "protection" tailored for our unique, personalized, and therefore oh so special experience.  Such sadness to see things so incredibly controlled these days.

My effort to limit/restrict the influence of GAFAM now includes a review of tools used in photography.  Cameras and lenses are owned outright (this is the easy part, rather like a current day holdover of an earlier, simpler time).  My image processing tools are never rented and come from the Open Source Community (which, BTW, often implements industry standards _better_ than RentWare).  To speed the image processing pipeline up even further I sometimes use the Command Line Interface to invoke tools that do specific jobs quickly and efficiently.   I must, by definition, be punk.  Huh.  Never knew.  Doesn't change a thing, actually.

Here is my evolving kept for memory reasons list of commands, expanding to include the above motivations for their being in my life.

------------------ original post ------------------- 

Notes to self:  A few useful image processing commands for running in Linux.  All these are much faster to run from the CLI than using an app that's having to manage graphics at the same time. -

convert *.jpg -average <averaged-filename>.jpg – averaging command

convert *.jpg -evaluate-sequence median <output file-name>.jpg  - a different averaging command

mogrify -resize 1920 *.jpg – resizing command

mogrify -bordercolor black -border 10x10 *.jpg – adding a thin black edge to images

mogrify -bordercolor white -border 400x400 *.jpg – adding a white border to images

convert <filename>.<file-extension> -colorspace gray <output filename>.<file-extension> – command to convert a single image to black and white

for i in *.jpg; do convert "$i" -colorspace Gray  "BW_$i"; done – Bash script to convert a bunch of files into black and white

exiftool -a -u -s -G1 <file_name> - to read EXIF image file data

gmic -input <filename.file-extension> scale_dcci2x , cut 0,255 round output <theOutputFileName>.tif - command to perform a DCCI2x upsize

LibreOffice : Impress
menu Insert | Media | Photo Album :: Slide Layout 

 

Black and White digital filters in image processing...

I'm working up to a critique that I'll post at some point in the (hopefully) not too distant future.  To get there from here I want to cover Black and White digital filters in image processing.

The topic arose in my mind when musing over a digital recipe/filter that would accurately/correctly match the spectral response curve of early silver nitrate light sensitive materials, including but certainly not limited to wet-plate collodion.

I found a digital filter that I'm very happy with and for the sake of brevity I'll dispense with the steps I took to the final form.  If anyone wants the complete details, ask.

Here's the starting image.  Top and bottom are grayscale step wedges that I developed for the Digital Zone System I've worked on.  The center of the image is a simple color chip chart.   Examples were processed using RawTherapee.

Starting point -

 

Simple color desaturation - 

Relative RGB channel mix -

Luminance human perception modeling - 

Relative RGB channel mix "Ortho" filter -

Silver Nitrate relative RGB channel mix Red=0 Green=10 Blue=90 filter - 

Comments -

Short answer:  

Digital filters for Black and White color conversions seem to do what they're supposed to.

Long answer:  

Simple désaturation sucks. Colors don't translate to the tonality my eyes would expect to see.  Yet this is EXACTLY what old Black and White film does.  Sure, the ends of the color spectrum might be clipped differently on each end.  The meat of the curve behaves just like this simple de-sat.

Relative RGB channel mix is a minor improvement over simple désaturation. This is to be expected since all channels are set to 33 percent.

Luminance human perception modeling gives an accurate translation of colors into Black and White for the way I "see" tonality and luminance.   This is an outstanding foundation from which to build tonal separation in digital Black and White photography.  Further, in-camera Sony, Fuji GFX, and Panasonic Lumix S (the only system I've looked at) all appear to conform to luminance human perception modeling Black and White jpg generation.

Relative RGB channel mix with RawTherapee's "Ortho" filter seems to look very much like modern orthochromatique film response.  If I want early silver nitrate light sensitive material response, this is most definitely not what I'd look for.  Close-ish.  No cigar.

Silver Nitrate relative RGB channel set specifically to Red=0 Green=10 Blue=90 appears to hit the target.  The tonal response curve closely matches that of old silver nitrate light sensitive materials.  Goal!

A little more:

I could spend far too long looking/comparing/evaluating various combinations of channel mixture and digital filters and this and that.  Should I ever find myself in such a state I processed a number of images.  The collection of the Madness is found here, and scroll right.

In practice, I find the luminance formula in RawTherapee to be excellent for general Black and White conversions.  To explore the early pre-panchromatic Black and White photography "look" my little "Silver Nitrate" formula gives me pleasing results.

Processing an Image

Just for fun I thought I'd post a quick comment on how I processed an image I took at Rodin's Atelier in Meudon.

Image -

... and here's what I did to it: 

• Let the in-camera meter do its best
• Ricoh 55mm wide open at f/2.2  
• *click* the shutter 
• Opened RAW image in RawTherapee
• Applied my 0EV Digital Zone System curve
• Adjusted the ends of the curves for pure white and pure black
• Opened the image in the Gimp
• Back in RawTherapee, processed the sky for tonality and contrast
• Opened the sky processed image in the Gimp as a layer over the first image
• Gimp selected the sky of the first image
• Added a black mask to the second layered image
• Filled the selection area in the mask with pure white
• Adjusted the mask "sharpness" to Gauss soften with a 10 pixel radius
• Flattened the image and saved

Done.  That's it.  That's all it took to get these the way I wanted.

The trick, of course, was protecting the whites/highlights, then applying a correct Zone 3 thru 7 1EV step curve, and stripping in the sky. 

Lens Stories ~ Ricoh Riconar 55mm f/2.2

 

Cheap thrills.  That's the name of the game for this old fart.  Retired and living on a fixed income can do that to a person.  Under such Trying Circumstances it's thrilling to hit Pay Dirt, particularly when least expected. 

How on earth did I stumble upon this? Long story short, after reading about the Wollensak Raptar Series II and how it could be turned into a soft focus lens I've been in occasional Deep Cogitation mulling over the State of Things.  I like the idea of a "correct" soft focus lens for Full Frame and APS-C digital, _not_ one of those Over The Top spherical aberration lenses that everyone and their brothers-in-law already knows about.  All "soft focus" has _not_ been created equal.

Lacking sufficient Louis d'Or and Blue Chip Coupon Stamps for something like an Anachromat Kühn Tiefenbildner-Imagon 12cm, or a more modern Minolta 85mm f/2.8 Varisoft, or, heaven forefend, returning to large format with something very tasty mounted to the front standard and trying to find a darkroom somewhere in the Ilford/Adox Forsaken City of "Glorious Light", I turned what's left of my mind toward modifications that might be made to lenses. 

I looked at Russian Industar lenses.  Like the Wollensak Raptar Series II the Industar is tessar formula and looked for ways of controlling just how far in front of the factory installed position I could modify the position of the first element.  I looked at the Russian Biotar formula Helios.  These are easy to disassemble and "reconfigure."  And I thought about finding another Nikkor plasmat in poor shape and convert it (as I've done in the past).

Time Passes. 

One evening, casually enjoying the warm afterglow of a quite decent Alsacien dry, yes, bone dry, delicious Muscat and thumbing around the 'net I stumbled on a comment that I that caught my attention.

It was noted that the Ricoh Riconar 55m f/2.2 is not a "good" lens.  Commenters were complaining the thing has to be stopped way down to sharpen up.  Oh.  This could be Fun, right?  Soft, you imply?  Hmmm...

 

Looking up the lens, which until that moment I'd never heard of, and here I get all puffy-chested thinking I know so much camera/lens histories when in fact I don't, I found it's cheap and easy to acquire.  We're off to a Good Start.  Maybe an Old Man could afford one?  Short the wine stocks a bottle or two, tough things out for a couple days, and I'll bet I could see what's up with this Horrid Optic.

Before the lights went out for the night I found the lens is _not_ to be confused with a Fuji 55mm f/2.2 of similar vintage (not that I would've ever made such a Silly Mistake myself, um, where was I?).  The Ricoh design layout looks at a distance like an old Taylor Taylor and Hobson triple.  Squint.  See what I'm saying?  Except.  Except. Except, someone tore one down to find the Ricoh is actually four elements in four groups.  When I think of four elements in four groups I think of Artar process and Kodak 203 Ektar.  But the Ricoh is neither of those.  Strange things were unfolding at the Circle K.  I've never encountered anything so "odd."

Sleepily reading a bit further... a little light went on inside my head...  Damn! it was suddenly bright in here.  Gads. Shut that thing off, will ya?   It's time to go to sleep. FerKripeSake!  

There was an observation that the front element is used to focus the lens.  The other three elements remain stationary.  Stationary as in Not Meant To Move.  Stationary as the Rock of Gilbraltar.  Stationary as the English Monarchy.  Most likely they did this as a manufacturing/assembly cost cutting to the Bone Marrow Measure.  

OK.  My Curiosité Meter was now pegged.  I _had_ to have a look at this Slutty Easy Cheap Lens and see if it was as Beautifully Awful as was being suggested.  Front focus.  Simple element layout.  Cheap.  Widely available.  Did I mention cheap?  Easy, too.  Yes.  I think I just repeated me-self.

 

A very very short period of time passes. 

Glory Be! I get to keep my Sacred Bottles of Wine _and_ am now the proud owner of two of these Little Pieces of Crap.  10Euro.  15Euro.  How good is that?

Does it "work?"  Check out this series of images and tell me if you can sort out which images were made using the Ricoh.  Maybe it "works", eh?

Optical "softness" ~ three lens comparison

I have three optics that I've purchased over the years to see if I could use them as soft focus lenses on Full Frame and APS-C digital.  One lens is an early 50mm plasmat formula f/1.4 that shows spherical aberration when shot wide open.  One is an 85mm "meniscus" Soft Focus that has proven to be very difficult to control due in large part to its level of softness.  And one lens is a first element focusing 55mm lens that is proving interesting to understand.

The lenses are ~ 

• Nikon Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4
• Pentax 85mm f/2.2 SF
• Ricoh Riconar 55mm f/2.2

The Nikkor-S is well known.  It's a classic plasmat design.  As the lens was designed well before modern high-refractive index glass became available, the 50mm Nikkor shows obvious spherical aberration at f/1.4.  The effect largely disappears at f/2.  Stopped down the lens is indistinguishable from current 50/55mm lenses.

The Pentax SF is a beast of the lens to work with.  There is an enormous amount of spherical aberration at all apertures.  It's so strong that at f/2.2 and f/2.8 the underlying sharpness of a subject is heavily veiled and overall contrast is low.  As the lens is stopped down the contrast and central resolution improves, the veiling spherical aberration decreases, but the edges begin to show weird coke-bottle-bottom smearing.

The Ricoh Riconar 55mm f/2.2 has a bad reputation on at least one of the Pentax discussion forums for being soft with inconsistant/incomprehensible behavior.  The lens is a four element four group design and uses the front/first element to focus.  The other three elements and aperture positions remain fixed.  I've not encountered modern-ish SLR lenses with this configuration outside of this one Ricoh.  The difficulty to control this optic comes from the fact aperture and distance change the character/rendering of the lens (though 'netizens don't fully discuss this fact).

Looking at these three different ways, I wanted to observe differences in how softness is achieved on a close subject.  Softness behavior on distant subjects would be different, but I wanted to begin somewhere. 

Wide Open ~

Wide open the Nikon and Ricoh show beautiful levels of softness.  The Pentax is quite obviously soft and of lower contrast (I used the exact same RawTherapee image processing recipe in all cases).

f/2.8  ~

Stopping the lenses down to f/2.8 shows how the Nikon is becoming razor sharp.  The Ricoh is cleaning up a little, too and the overall rendition is, to my eyes, rather pleasing.  The Pentax continues to show strong softness, though contrast is slightly improved over f/2.2.

f/5.6 ~ 

 

At f/5.6 the lenses are cleaning up pretty well.  The Nikkor-S and Ricoh look sharp.  The Pentax is still a soft focus lens, but the subject is more clearly and cleaning revealed and the overall contrast is vastly improved over f/2.2 and f/2.8.

Closer Look ~

Trying to understand how each lens treats sharpness and out of focus areas reveals some interesting details. 

I needed to stop the Pentax down to f/2.8 to show the subject better because at f/2.2 most of the details were lost.  Contrast is still low at f/2.8, but I begin to see what I wanted to see.  The left hand image is actually pretty sharp.  This comes from the effects of spherical aberration (which this lens has in abundance) on perceived depth of field.

The Nikkor-S is sharp at the point of focus.  The out of focus rendition is soft as one would expect.  Due to the lens design the transition from sharp to soft is dramatic. Modern high speed optics consistently behave in this manner.

On the other hand, the Ricoh behaves rather differently from the other two lenses.  The out of focus areas are extended due to aperture and spherical aberration (see the left hand image).  The highlights glow just as with early "pictorialist" lenses where the Nikkor-S and Pentax do not.  There's a sense of resolution that can be appealing even though the lens is not "bitingly" sharp.   Contrast wide open is the best of the these three lenses.

 

 

I can see why I feel the need to boost image contrast when using the Pentax 85mm SF.  The veiling spherical aberration is strong, but there's a potentially useful resolution under that veil.  In practice, increasing overall as well as local contrast during image processing might have some uses.  Back in the day I imagine photo-alchemists working to increase negative contrast as much as they could to try and overpower the contrast reducing veiling softness.

Nikon created a very decent lens.  At f/2.8 I see the level of optical correction improving to the point I can make a perfectly usable image in the current sense of such things.  The out of focus rendition remains soft and the contrast is nearly up to modern-lens levels.  For "soft focus" work, however, the optic doesn't really sing to me.  It's as if it's warming up but isn't quite ready for a full concert before an adoring "soft focus" audience.

Considering the overall rendition of the Ricoh at f/2.2 I see something I didn't think I'd ever find in a small format optic; controllable softness based on aperture and subject distance.  To me this lens behaves a lot like an early "soft focus" portrait lens.  While it's usable for landscape images (as I'll perhaps talk about another time), its specialty appears to be for portraiture and subjects closer to the camera.  This might be an optic worth exploring for "soft focus" work on Full Frame and APS-C digital formats.

Digital Zone System ~ Panasonic Lumix S9 in-camera B&W jpg generation

I had ever more good fortune to be able to borrow for another 20 minutes a brand new Panasonic Lumix S9.  

I'm surprised at how nice the camera is.  I'd be really happy to own one.  It'd be a kick to use.  Would I have to choose between this and the GFX100RF Fuji?  Or could I have both?  I could use all the vintage lenses I own.  The Panasonic allows for user generated LUTs - something I wish my Sony cameras offered.  The menu system is understandable and complete (with a HUGE number of video options, should a person decide to go that route).  

The only downsides to the S9 being the lack of EVF and electronic only shutter.  As with the limitations of the GFX I'm sure I could learn to live with the Panasonic as is.  Humans are sometimes adaptable, right?  Even at this age.

Me being me I was curious to see how the Panasonic would behave with regards to Digital Zone System tonal values as I've come to understand them and to see how Panasonic implemented their in-camera jpg engine.  I put this camera through my little procedures two days after the Fuji and looked at the default Black and White creative style, then at the in-camera Leica monochrome "film simulation" on the S9.

Here's what I see.

Comments ~

Comparing the default Black and White Panasonic output against the 1EV per Zone standard I see that Zone 5/0EV is +0.3EV higher than the #76 luminosity 18% black standard.  This is consistant and confirmed by performing several sweeps to see what the Panasonic's metering/jpg engine are doing.  Is it part of Panasonic's deliberate "look?"  Or something else?

Like with the Fuji the S9 blacks drop off a bit quicker than the 1EV per Zone standard, but compared against the Zone System tonal range of my Sony A6300 APS-C + DRO1 I see the Panasonic tracks the Sony recipe down to Zone 2, and then extends gently beyond the Sony's Zone 0.  

Highlights are "hotter" than both the "ideal" and the Sony A6300 recipe.  This is due to the way the camera meters Zone5/0EV.  Again, as with the Fuji, in the real world I would expect the Panasonic Lumix S9 to deliver "open" shadow tones.

Turning to the Leica Monochrome "film simulation" at default settings reveal, for me, a horror.  Look at what this recipe delivers.  Hot hot whites.  Why would Leica take a short highlight region (as is standard with digital systems for how sensors are currently implemented) and _shorten_ it?  it seems like a recipe for disaster.  

Maybe it's just me and the "cool kids" know something I don't, but if forced to use the Leica style I'd start be setting the exposure dial to at least -0.3ev, perhaps more, just so the highlights don't get blown.  True film NEVER behaved this way.  GACK!  What a mess.  But, it says Leica, so it must be good.  To someone.  Somewhere. 

As with the cameras I've thus far looked at from a Digital Zone System perspective, the Panasonic Lumix S9 has a "spot" meter selection and that buttons/touch screen selections are customizable for AEL lock.  The S9 would make a very fine stills Zone System device.  Just put the EV dial at -0.3, avoid shooting artificial lighting at the lightings cycle rate (banding would be a problem), avoid that silly Leica Monochrome "film simulation" unless you really understand where the tones lay and everything should be "good to go." 

Having looked at two new cameras after starting with my Sony's I've come to understand something.  Cameras offer similar capabilities independent of the marque.  Understanding how in-camera jpg ASIC engines deliver tone values in the framework of a Digital Zone System in Black and White "works" regardless of marque.  

I now feel confident in the Digital Zone System method.  The process described below appears to be sufficient to the task.

------------- References From Prior Posts ---------------

Note: Sony RAW delivers very good tonal separation in the dark tones that are not expressed when using the in-camera jpg processor EXMOR and EXMOR R versions of the ASIC.  It seems that Sony made a conscious choice about how the dark tones are handled.  There's nothing wrong with their decision as far as I'm concerned.  It's just something to know and work with.  

In my own work  I mitigate the steep dark tone drop-off of the default B&W setting by adding DRO1, which brings up the shadows to the degree I prefer.  Panasonic doesn't seem to require this kind of massaging by default, but could benefit from being used at -0.3EV to ensure Zone 5/0EV meets the industry standard specifications.

Zone System Definition ~

• Zones are separated by 1 f-stop/1 Exposure Value (EV)
• Zone 5 ~
• old film days == 18% gray
• digital tone value == #76(hexidecimal)/118(decimal)
• Pure Black
• old film days == Zone 0 at -5EV
• digital tone values == -EV-whatever the camera system can deliver (commonly different between RAW - ideally -10EV!!!  and the in-camera jpg generator - Sony Creative Style Black and White in-camera seems set at -5EV, Fuji's GFX isn't demonstrably different from this)
• Pure White
• old film days == Zone 10 (last definition) or Zone 9 (earlier definition)
• digital tone value == +4EV  as Zone 9 for the Sony cameras I own (this has been measured and is very important! to successfully using the Zone System in digital)

Digital Zone System In-Camera jpg Step Wedge generation ~ 

To evaluate in-camera jpg generation here's the method I used to create a Step Wedge that I could visually inspect to when making various in-camera parameter changes -

•  Camera settings - 
• ISO == 100
• Creative Style B&W
• B&W Contrast to a test value - I've tried -3 to +1
• Dynamic Range Optimization - Off or DROx where x == [1, 2, 3]
• Meter to Spot
• Output file == jpg 
• Manual focus and defocus the lens as much as possible to fully blur the scene (wanting just tone, no texture) 

• Using an evenly lit surface (piece of paper, wall, etc)...
• Take two photos at 0EV and verify which 0EV setting gives exactly #76/118(dec) in the center (where the Spot meter metered) by measuring the tonal value using an image processing software on a computer.  This will be Zone 5 per definition.
• Raise EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 6 the tonal value as read on a computer 
• Raise EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 7 the tonal value as read on a computer 
•  Raise EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 8 the tonal value as read on a computer 
• Raise EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 9 the tonal value as read on a computer
• Verify that this tonal value is exactly or very very nearly Pure White
•  Returning to Zone 5/0EV... lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 4 the tonal value on a computer 
•  Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 3 the tonal value on a computer 
• Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 3 the tonal value on a computer 
• Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 2 the tonal value on a computer
• Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 1 the tonal value on a computer
• Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 0 the tonal value on a computer - this should record as #00/00(decimal), Pure Black

In practice, older/early mirrorless cameras only provide +/-3EV on the exposure wheel.  In these cases I use "M" (Manual) mode, set the aperture and ISO, then vary the shutter speed by 1EV up/down the test range.  On more recent cameras where +/-5EV is available on the I set the system to "S" (Shutter) mode, set the ISO, then vary the EV by 1EV using the exposure wheel.  Why any company allows +5EV is beyond me, but that's a topic for another time (noting that +5EV is 1EV ABOVE completely and utterly saturated pure white). 

Notes On USE: In a practical sense I find Zones 3 through 7 to be the most important.  If those are as close to 1EV separated as possible, then I like the output.  This is very similar to what I experienced back in the film days.

For the shadow areas I find I prefer Zones 0 through 2 to be rather outside the 1EV separation definition.  This matches film curves more closely and since I'm used to that I like a certain combination of Contrast and DRO settings.

For the highlights I like to make them "sparkle" if I can.  I find I prefer Zone 8 to be pushing closer to Pure White than not.  Having just written that, however, I shot an entire series of in-camera generated images that pleased me using nothing but Contrast == -3.  So it's worth testing different combinations of Contrast and DRO to see what works best for oneself.

 

Digital Zone System ~ Fuji GFX100RF in-camera B&W jpg generation

I had the good fortune to be able to borrow for about 20 minutes a brand new Fuji GFX100RF.  What a beautiful camera Fuji has made.  I'd be thrilled to own one.  Yes, even if it is fixed lens, bigger than anything I currently own, and comes with a confusing array of knobs, dials, and buttons.  I'd adapt.  Really.  I could.

Reading the marketing literature and camera reviews I expected to see "better" performance of some kind or other out of this new Fuji over, say, any Full Frame or APS-C device.  Bigger is better, right?  How could it not be?

More specifically, I was curious to see how the Fuji with a larger than Full Frame sensor would behave vis a vis a Digital Zone System tonal values as I've come to understand them and to see how Fuji implemented their in-camera jpg engine.  I put the camera through its paces.  I started by looking at the default Black and White creative style and then turned my attention to Fuji's Acros in-camera "film simulation".

Here's what I found.

Comments ~

Comparing the default Black and White Fuji output against the 1EV per Zone standard I see that Zone 5/0EV is very close to the #76 luminosity 18% black standard.  The blacks drop off a bit quicker than the 1EV per Zone standard, but compared against the Zone System tonal range of my Sony A6300 APS-C + DRO1 I see the Fuji has a broader range of tones in the dark areas.  Highlights are nearly, but not quite identical between the "ideal", the Sony A6300 recipe and this Fuji.  The Fuji produces a brighter Zone 8.  Further, in practice I would expect the Fuji GFX100RF to offer up an "open" range of shadow tones over the Sony recipe.

As a side note, Sony RAW delivers very good tonal separation in the dark tones that are not expressed when using the in-camera jpg processor EXMOR and EXMOR R versions of the ASIC.  It seems that Sony made a conscious choice about how the dark tones are handled.  There's nothing wrong with their decision as far as I'm concerned.  It's just something to know and work with.  In my own work  I mitigate the steep dark tone drop-off of the default B&W setting by adding DRO1, which brings up the shadows to the degree I prefer.  Fuji doesn't seem to require this kind of massaging by default.

Looking at the Acros "film simulation" at default settings I see the entire tonal range is brought down to various degrees compared with the standard.  Perhaps this is what Fuji feels could give a sense of "richness" when using this style?  In any event, I feel the Acros setting simply produces a darker B&W image in camera.

I verified that the Fuji GFX100RF has a "spot" meter selection and that buttons are customizable for AEL lock.  So, just as with Sony upon which I developed the details of this Digital Zone System, the medium format Fuji appears to provide a decent platform for in-camera jpg Zone System tonal range management.  The "goodness" being, if I were wealthy enough to afford a Fuji in the first place, I would know exactly where to place the various tones of a scene.

 

------------- References From Prior Posts ---------------

Zone System Definition ~

• Zones are separated by 1 f-stop/1 Exposure Value (EV)
• Zone 5 ~
• old film days == 18% gray
• digital tone value == #76(hexidecimal)/118(decimal)
• Pure Black
• old film days == Zone 0 at -5EV
• digital tone values == -EV-whatever the camera system can deliver (commonly different between RAW - ideally -10EV!!!  and the in-camera jpg generator - Sony Creative Style Black and White in-camera seems set at -5EV, Fuji's GFX isn't demonstrably different from this)
• Pure White
• old film days == Zone 10 (last definition) or Zone 9 (earlier definition)
• digital tone value == +4EV  as Zone 9 for the Sony cameras I own (this has been measured and is very important! to successfully using the Zone System in digital)

Digital Zone System In-Camera jpg Step Wedge generation ~ 

To evaluate in-camera jpg generation here's the method I used to create a Step Wedge that I could visually inspect to when making various in-camera parameter changes -

•  Camera settings - 
• ISO == 100
• Creative Style B&W
• B&W Contrast to a test value - I've tried -3 to +1
• Dynamic Range Optimization - Off or DROx where x == [1, 2, 3]
• Meter to Spot
• Output file == jpg 
• Manual focus and defocus the lens as much as possible to fully blur the scene (wanting just tone, no texture) 

• Using an evenly lit surface (piece of paper, wall, etc)...
• Take two photos at 0EV and verify which 0EV setting gives exactly #76/118(dec) in the center (where the Spot meter metered) by measuring the tonal value using an image processing software on a computer.  This will be Zone 5 per definition.
• Raise EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 6 the tonal value as read on a computer 
• Raise EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 7 the tonal value as read on a computer 
•  Raise EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 8 the tonal value as read on a computer 
• Raise EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 9 the tonal value as read on a computer
• Verify that this tonal value is exactly or very very nearly Pure White
•  Returning to Zone 5/0EV... lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 4 the tonal value on a computer 
•  Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 3 the tonal value on a computer 
• Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 3 the tonal value on a computer 
• Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 2 the tonal value on a computer
• Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 1 the tonal value on a computer
• Lower the EV by 1EV
• Take a photo
• Measure and note as Zone 0 the tonal value on a computer - this should record as #00/00(decimal), Pure Black

In practice, older/early mirrorless cameras only provide +/-3EV on the exposure wheel.  In these cases I use "M" (Manual) mode, set the aperture and ISO, then vary the shutter speed by 1EV up/down the test range.  On more recent cameras where +/-5EV is available on the I set the system to "S" (Shutter) mode, set the ISO, then vary the EV by 1EV using the exposure wheel.  Why any company allows +5EV is beyond me, but that's a topic for another time (noting that +5EV is 1EV ABOVE completely and utterly saturated pure white). 

Notes On USE: In a practical sense I find Zones 3 through 7 to be the most important.  If those are as close to 1EV separated as possible, then I like the output.  This is very similar to what I experienced back in the film days.

For the shadow areas I find I prefer Zones 0 through 2 to be rather outside the 1EV separation definition.  This matches film curves more closely and since I'm used to that I like a certain combination of Contrast and DRO settings.

For the highlights I like to make them "sparkle" if I can.  I find I prefer Zone 8 to be pushing closer to Pure White than not.  Having just written that, however, I shot an entire series of in-camera generated images that pleased me using nothing but Contrast == -3.  So it's worth testing different combinations of Contrast and DRO to see what works best for oneself.