I think the advice offered so far is pretty much spot on.
IMHO it is quite possible to apply what you have learned relating to the Zone System and there is no reason why you cannot use your existing spot meter. Just think of your camera sensor as a new type of film (with quite a bit of exposure/processing latitude
) compared to the old analogue stuff.
FWIW I have also recently acquired a D800E and hardly had a chance to play but some thoughts that may be helpful and hopefully not seen as trying to teach granny to suck eggs
....With film, I remember the teacher's "Expose for the shadows, and develop for the highlights" mantra. Digital seems to be the reverse: Expose for the highlights and process (in some RAW converter) for the shadows.
Seems pretty much spot on and I suppose you could think of digital as transparency but capable of holding a much wider scene dynamic range
Just where and how one gets the middle Zone V to fall between them is the tricky part and likely due to the RAW converter - so far.
Your Zone V value would be L*50 as shown in Lightroom or in RGB values would be around 118 in a 2.2 gamma such as Adobe RGB and approx RGB=100 in ProPhoto
I think I got it to work with Nikon's ViewNX-i as it batch processes the NEFs and also does a nice contact sheet as above. Seems though I have to fiddle with the camera's internal menu a bit though with the Brightness setting (+1 so far).
I do not use ViewNX so difficult to comment although I would say that it is not the way you should be doing this. Your NEF's are being converted on the fly and all sorts of things happening to arrive at the contact sheet. I really believe that this is skewing your perception and leading you to make incorrect assumptions.
It is not clear to me what you are referring to with Brightness setting of +1. AFAIK there is only one thing that adjusts the overall exposure setting and that is in the Custom Settings Menu item b Metering/exposure b6 Fine Tune optimal exposure. Selecting this menu allows you to adjust the Matrix, Centre weighted and Spot metering to +/- 1. Be careful with this as if you adjust you will not see any information that you have made such adjustments showing anywhere in the camera menu system (unlike normal exposure compensation)
The only thing I can think you may be changing is the Picture control settings but these do not affect the raw image (my assumption is you are wanting to use raw?) and will be ignored in any raw editor other than Nikon. Adobe has its own Nikon presets which are pretty close to Nikon in camera.
I have not had time to properly investigate but it seems to me that my D800 is a little hyperactive with exposures tending to overexpose and certainly disagrees with my newly acquired spot meter still I need to test a little more to confirm and rule out clumsy user error
. Anyway shooting a flatly lit grey card and bringing the NEF into Lightroom shows a value of 56.9% with Camera Neutral (Adobe Std a little higher) a little higher (1/3 stop?) than the magic 50% (if that zone placement is of particular importance!) Now just trying Raw Therapee and confess not being used to navigating or even RTFM it seems to me that the default setting shows the L value of 50% and the custom setting with all zeroed an L value of 39. See example attached
Didn't try ACR since it doesn't seem to work with camera settings a well as with the Nikon software, it just does its own curve thing which seems to punch blues up and a bit too much vibrancy and contrast too so maybe not a good idea if one wants to play with the Zone System in B&W. I need to check deeper into Nikon's Auto Dynamic Range settings (By default) too as I fear that may be causing havoc being set at Auto.
I am not aware of any means of adjusting the cameras Dynamic range - am I missing something?