NOOB needs to understand HISTORGRAM!

Vantage

Vantage

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Name
Roger
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As photography is one step at time (for me anyway) I'm now interested in how the Historgram works. I could google it but would much rather the input of TP. Its probably been posted about tons of times but search is disabled...lucky me! So any thread links would be great too.

With my limted knowledge, is it about the under exposure over exposure of a photo? and the evenness the exposure is throughout the photo?

What happens if say the far right area white peaks are at the top? Or when it just seems to be a black desolate area.

How can I tell when a photo is the nuts exposure wise through the historgram in camera?

At what point, from reading the historgram, is a photo un-usable.

How can you tell through editing, in say, lightroom 3 that the historgram has improved for the better after editing and is it that important. I'm sure it is...

Cant wait to learn about the historgram from all you.

cheers

Rog:thumbs:
 
Hi Vantage.

Too difficult for me to explain properly as it involves understanding the subject you are photographing; a close up of white roses gives a very different histogram to the same roses photographed from further away to include the dark foliage.

The easiest way is to have a look at the first 2 items on this page;
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/search.cgi?zoom_cat[]=1&zoom_query=histogram

I always have the “blinkies” switched on so I can see the over/under exposed bits blinking. If I get both blinking I’m outside the dynamic range, and if only one I can use exposure compensation if necessary. (don’t know if your camera has that function but it will be a menu option if you have).


hope that helps
QS
 
A histograms adds up pixels of equal tones and stacks them in vertical rows.
it shows them as a graph representing the darkest tones (stacKs) on the left and lightest on the right.

Read the links that you have been given, to see how various scenes will be represented.
After a while interpreting them becomes second nature.
 
This is a good link on histograms, from the Sekonic light meter folks http://www.sekonic.com/images/files/HistogramsLightmetersWorkTogether.pdf

And another one from those lovely peeps at Luminous Landscape on Expose To The Right (of the histogram) technique which is the way to exposure nirvana with digital http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

For best exposure I use evaluative/matrix metering which always gets pretty close, then chimp the histogram and push to the right as much as I dare. Blinkies enabled is absolutely vital for this task (highlight over exposure warning, in the menu) and it also helps to turn down the contrast on the camera pre-sets to give you a better idea of exactly where you are. All the camera pre-sets affect the histogram in theory, but contrast seems to be the only one that changes the histogram/blinkies significantly.

PS If people start going on about 18% grey and the Zone System, it will only confuse you. They are really only applicable to negative film (despite claims to the contrary).
 
Thanks HoppyUK for those links, will have to read through them slowly a few times to let it all sink in. ;)
 
Thanks all so far.

I'll take a look at the two links a little latter tonight when I have more time.

The dirty screen threw me to!:nuts:
 
pauljs said:
Have a look at this, it may help!
Click to expand...

Great link! I know I keep doing this, but the histogram section of the creativelive Fundamentals of digital photography 10 week course was very good. i'ts expensive at $129, but that's 20 hours of insight. Personally I found it really useful; watched it live for free but then had to have a copy of it - now have every one of the ten week lectures on my iphone
 
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