Histogram on a 7D (1 Viewer)

[barmy2]

I'm taking a photography course at the local college in Nature Photography, leading to a Photography Certificate. The instructor claims that a well exposed photo's histogram is positioned right of centre. He claims that the pixels that are most easily adjusted post processing are found in this area. What are your experiences with this? Myself, I have found the opposite more to my liking. Have I just become accustomed to my exposures? Should I try to over expose vs underexpose to shift my histogram to the right?

Any input would be appreciated

 

[Roy C]

I'm taking a photography course at the local college in Nature Photography, leading to a Photography Certificate. The instructor claims that a well exposed photo's histogram is positioned right of centre. He claims that the pixels that are most easily adjusted post processing are found in this area. What are your experiences with this? Myself, I have found the opposite more to my liking. Have I just become accustomed to my exposures? Should I try to over expose vs underexpose to shift my histogram to the right?

Any input would be appreciated

Barry, if you under expose and then and adjust in processing not only will you increase any noise but also you will be missing out on a lot of the Cameras dynamic range. Exposing to the right (ETTR) minimizes any noise and gives you the full dynamic range of the Camera. I always aim to expose a shot that is just clipping the whites (look for the blinkies on the LCD). If you shoot in RAW any slight over exposure is easily pulled back.
IMO getting the exposure right is the most undervalued part of photography as a lot seem to think that any errors can be rectified in processing - big mistake IMO.

BTW if you Google ETTR you will find more detailed info on the merits of exposing to the right.

 

[ericbowles]

Clipping either end of the histogram is a problem. If you clip to the right and blow highlights you might be able to recover a third of a stop, but if you can't recover blown highlights it is easy to ruin the image. Bright spots attract attention, so blown highlights are a fatal flaw.

The other end of the histogram is also a problem. Dark areas can be recovered in many cases. You might have issues with noise, but if you have tools to selectively deal with noise you can handle the problem. I find that if an image is too dark it can look flat and lack midtone and dark area contrast.

So you are looking to neither overexpose nor underexpose. If you have to clip - you can clip a third of a stop or maybe a half and recover in post processing. Beyond that, it is often better to lose shadows which are going to be dark anyway. In my work, the exception is you should properly expose the subject even if it means overexposing the background. This especially applies to birds in flight where I will sometimes intentionally blow out the sky to correctly expose the subject.

 

[Roy C]

The thing with bird photography is that you are primarily looking to correctly expose the bird, often at the expense of other parts of the image - a few 'blinkies' in the background are easily taken care of in post.
An example would be a darkish flying bird that it small in the frame against a very bright sky, if you expose the sky correctly the bird will be underexposed - could easily be 2 stops or more (the typical novices black blob in the sky scenario) It is far better to expose the bird correctly and then tone down the sky in post (very easily done). To get everything in a image exposed perfectly is beyond the capabilities of DSLR's so you have a choice, do you get a perfectly exposed sky with dark blob in the shot or a perfectly exposed bird! I know which I prefer
You obviously do not want to completely 'blow' a part the the bird but that is a different thing to a slight clipping (mind you there are even ways of repairing small blown areas of the bird most times).

 

[beakgeek]

The histogram is merely a tool to help properly expose the subject. I usually find an object that is in the same light that has neutral colors take a meter reading off of it and take a shot. If the histogram looks like a nice bell curve then the exposure should be correct. Take note......there are plenty of times that subjects with lots of dark and light components can throw off the histogram. This is why you use it in conjunction to looking at the LCD to verify the image looks properly exposed. Personally, I would rather over expose than under expose since adjusting a too dark image introduces noise to the image as mentioned previously.

 

[Roy C]

Just another thought on the cameras histogram. The histogram and image preview is always a jpeg version of the shot so if you shoot in RAW what your are seeing is not necessarily a true representation of the RAW image (including the 'blinkies'). Not sure about Nikon but on a Canon this can be rectified by creating a user defined picture style that best replicates a RAW shot - this involves changing the sharpness, contrast and saturation settings. Note this will not affect the actual RAW shot but it will give you a more accurate in-Camera histogram.

 

[kirillso]

Also, using of uniWB white balance helps to archieve more correct histogram for RAW images. There is some information related to uniWB:
http://www.malch.com/nikon/UniWB.html

 

[barmy2]

Uniwb

Just surfing the web for Uniwb for Canon users if found this website that I think some may be interested in investigating.

http://www.guillermoluijk.com/tutorial/uniwb/index_en.htm

Thanks Kirillso for pointing me in this direction as a possible solution to my Histogram woes :t:

 

[DegasGoneDigital]

It depends what Your shooting, if it's a white bird and it's filling up the majority of the view finder then You would want the histogram to read right of center so the bird looks white. If its farther away then You would want it to read just left of center so the bird is not blown out.. Remember, the camera is trying to make everything neutral gray and you have to adjust exposure based on subject color and distance..

 

[Roy C]

Also, using of uniWB white balance helps to archieve more correct histogram for RAW images. There is some information related to uniWB:
http://www.malch.com/nikon/UniWB.html

Very interesting - thanks :t: