Histogram

[dxqcanada]

How many of you find that you use the Histogram every time you shoot as a tool to examine the exposure ?

I am finding it a very useful tool after shooting an image to ensure that the exposure does not fall too far out of range.

If you have LiveView can you also have live Histogram (I do not have a DSLR with this feature so I thought this would be a good reason to have it) ?

 

[dcclark]

I looooove the (hidden) color histograms on my D40. The single (luminescence) histogram can be dodgy to show you anything other than the most basic info, but the color ones give a great sense of what's happening with different colors, and color balance.

 

[astrostu]

I don't use it too often because my shots usually span a large dynamic range, and I don't always want my target to be in the 50% grey area. I pretty much know by now that my camera's meter is about +1/3 stop higher than I like, and so I adjust the exposure based on that. Except for my moon shots, which I do base on the histogram.

 

[Garbz]

Getting your target to be 50% grey isn't the only reason to use it.

I find it an invaluable tool for previewing images outside in the sun where it's almost impossible to see the screen properly. For night photography though I tend to stick to a preview with highlight indicators.

Also liveview histogram would be rather meaningless since Liveview is just a scene preview like the viewfinder. I suppose the camera could maybe guess what the exposure will be like based on the settings, but the actual image that gets snapped may be drastically different in light distribution from what the liveview sees.

 

[astrostu]

Getting your target to be 50% grey isn't the only reason to use it.

I know, but for example, my target I might want at 25% grey. But there's a non-linear continuum behind that target signal that may peak at 60% grey. Hence, without actually isolating my target in other software, the overall histogram of the shot isn't useful in that situation.