Histogram advice

mikew · 2009-01-01T12:41:58+0000

Reading a comment to a photo on another site this comment was made Otherwise, unless you are deliberately going for low-key, you should always make sure some pixels in the frame reach the 255 level(Histogram reaches the right hand side at the 255 level). Is that good advice? Mike

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George Lazare... George Lazarette

8192 posts
22 years
London

Posted 03/01/2009 - 19:38 Link

I have to say that I find the histogram very useful for most shots. It takes only a moment to check that you haven't gone too far to the right. The left can look after itself.

G

Keywords: Charming, polite, and generally agreeable.

iceblinker iceblinker

3062 posts
19 years
England Inside leg: 34

Posted 03/01/2009 - 20:34 Link

SteveT wrote:
I gather (from the martin Evening cs3 book) that the on camera histogram is often based on jpeg capture only. If you are shooting in RAW it will not provide an accurate guide to the true potential of the image you have captured.

That may be true, but still with RAW the histogram can be useful as a rough guide at least.

The flasing highlights warning may also be inaccurate for the same reason, but still I find with the RAW data that highlights usually are blown when the camera warned that they would be.

Not a bad idea to have an extra margin for safety anyway. (The warning with RAW is likely to be conservative if it is inaccurate, rather than the other way round, I think).

~Pete