histogram

Fisheye83 · Dec 12, 2009

so i dont know if this is a beginers question or what but when i take pictures on my dslr it shows me the histogram which begs the question whats it for and is there something i should be looking at to use it properly?

Johnboy2978 · Dec 12, 2009

well, you would like to see a nice bell curve or normal distribution which would suggest that your exposure is spot on and balanced. The dark areas/shadows are located on the left, the highlights are on the right and the rest in the mid range.

Phranquey · Dec 12, 2009

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/beyond-basics/183562-histograms.html

Garbz · Dec 13, 2009

The histogram tells you something about the picture you just took. It could tell you that the picture is underexposed when the light is shining on your LCD and you can't see it properly. It'll tell you if you clip highlights and shadows.

Have a read of this short article with a lot of photographic examples: Understanding Histograms

Fisheye83 · Dec 13, 2009

thanks everyone! this really helps out

Big Mike · Dec 13, 2009

Understanding Histograms

Garbz · Dec 14, 2009

Beat you Mike

:cheers:

Jhamb · Dec 14, 2009

Big Mike said:
Understanding Histograms

Very good site for explaining even if your new to photography you can still understand! Thanks

Goontz · Dec 14, 2009

Very good links posted above, and I'll also add this video that does a good job of explaining them.

Big Mike · Dec 14, 2009

Garbz said:
Beat you Mike

:cheers:

Doh! I checked the link on the post above yours...but I must have missed checking yours.

Oh, well. It's worth two links. :lmao:

Tiberius47 · Dec 14, 2009

Just as long as you don't have big spikes on the far left or far right, you'll be right. The rest can come later.

Garbz · Dec 15, 2009

Really? I would say high key and low key shots are all about having big spikes far left and right.

The one thing that a lot of people don't mention when talking about histograms is that they do not necessarily indicate that anything is right or wrong, they just show what is.

Big Mike · Dec 15, 2009

Spikes are OK...what you usually want to avoid is clipping, where the graph looks like it's been cut off by the edge of the screen. That probably means that you have details that are completely black or completely white...with little or no chance of recovering any data from those areas of the image.

Tiberius47 · Dec 21, 2009

When I spoke of big spikes at either end, I was referring to clipping. High key and low key photos can be done in camera, but when overexposing in the camera, there's a much greater risk of blowing out the highlights, especially with beginners. In my experience, it's better to do that in post, where you have much greater control over the highlights and exposure.

JLEphoto · Dec 21, 2009

A good basic rule of thumb would be to expose the image so that it is as far right (light) as possible without clipping. Lightroom/photoshop etc. can change the exposure, if you are shooting raw, to the desired setting. You can do this if the histogram is to the far left but will generally cause a good amount of noise in the photograph. Rembmer some scenes such as sun set etc will have information blown out as that is the nature of the scene. However the majority of the information should not be. Just a basic rule (yes it can be broken with good effect) to work off of.