[jfrancis]

The ten values Craig Mullins (and many others) mentally uses when painting sound pretty close to the zones Ansel Adams describes.

Does anyone ever use the EV scale on a spotmeter to size up and mentally organize the values in a scene while painting?

Or do you think the whole point of mentally organizing your value scale while painting is to do it as you "feel it" and not as a camera would see it -- especially as we see in a wider range than cameras can see.