Odd Histogram Question

Hi Everyone!

I wish I could remember the exact circumstances when this ocurred, but I've gone and erased the images. Always too hasty.

I'm pretty sure the lighting was bright and over water, probably shooting in AV with aperture set at f8.

When I looked at the histogram, I saw the usual white-on-black mountain range, but many of the mountain tops had additional vertical lines (sort of half spaced, like a comb's teeth) extending upward.

I'm quite sure this has ocurred (though very rarely) while using different lenses.

Was the camera (K110D) giving me some additional information?

Thannks for your consideration!

I have only seen this on images I have edited a JPG on my computer! This is where I have stretched the historgram (Levels) and there is tonal information missing giving the comb effect. I havn't seen this on my K10D though.

Where you editing the photos at the time:, ie, Histogram like comb teeth after you had finished,: if yes the histogram was telling you that you had stretched your information if this makes sense

Beat me to it beakynet....

And with only 5 posts between us!

Thanks for the input folks,

This was showing on the camera itself - not the computer. In fact, these images never made it to a USB cable, not even to shore - I was shooting from a kayak.

And yes, I was shooting in JPEG.

And, if I remember, these were attempts at a sunrise - probably straining something!

The histogram was the very first thing I looked at after the shots in question. I've sort of gotten into the histogram habit now.

What was the image of? The water itself? Water with lots of bright highlights and dark areas on and between the waves?
If the camera basically read lots of distinct bright and dark areas, there may be spikes over lower broader areas in the histogram.
I would probably expect to see this more likely with a tele lens as opposed to a wide angle which would pick up more surrounding area.

Now, if there were no data between very tall solitary spikes, and the histogram actually looked like that of a modified JPG, I think that would be hard to achieve naturally and I might suspect something being wrong.

[quote:3496ace15f="amoringello"]What was the image of? The water itself? Water with lots of bright highlights and dark areas on and between the waves?
If the camera basically read lots of distinct bright and dark areas, there may be spikes over lower broader areas in the histogram.
I would probably expect to see this more likely with a tele lens as opposed to a wide angle which would pick up more surrounding area.

Yup, most likely a 50 / 50 land and water shot into the rising sun. Lens would have been medium - to short tele. (16 - 55 kit lens).

So, solid histogram = trees and land in silloette, comb's teeth = sparkley water?

Result, confused camera and very confused photographer

There's no guarantee on that. I'm just offering up one suggestion that might help identify whether there was a problem or not.

But it makes sense. The histogram is going to show you the amounts of light across its available range. In a high contrast landscape you may have bright sky, and dark trees. So you may get a double-hump camelback type histogram. Or at the extreme, a bowl curving with high points each end, and not much in between.

Over water and into the sunlight, I would expect a similar readout, as it has very high contrast and the meter will have a difficult time finding any middle ground.

Although I can envision where spikes might occur at various points across the range, like I said, I would not expect sharp narrow spikes with no data in between - i.e. true combs teeth.

Unfortunately without seeing the photo or the histogram it is difficult to say what might have caused the behavior.

amoringello,

Your therory makes a lot of sense!

Next time it happens - I'll hang onto the shot.

Watch this, it'll never happen again....

Thanks for the great input!

Cheers