The New York Underwater Photographic Society
Histograms
Anyone:
How do you read a histogram? I'm told they help judge exposure. Once you know how to read a histogram, when and where do you use them? Do you view them on your camera's monitor while underwater? Or when you're back on the boat scrolling through pics to keep? If you wait to view histograms on the boat, you've lost the moment on the dive to try again adjusting your exposure.
Any info will be greatly appreciated.
Steve Wright
How do you read a histogram? I'm told they help judge exposure. Once you know how to read a histogram, when and where do you use them? Do you view them on your camera's monitor while underwater? Or when you're back on the boat scrolling through pics to keep? If you wait to view histograms on the boat, you've lost the moment on the dive to try again adjusting your exposure.
Any info will be greatly appreciated.
Steve Wright
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by JasonDPG on -
Histograms are not as important to check while underwater as you may think. Set the camera display to show blown out highlights, which essentially is what you are looking for in a histogram. You don;t need to have a smooth and even histogram because you may not be going for a smooth and even shot, creative lighting will not create that anyway. You will train you eye over time to know what a well exposed image looks like in your LCD. The histogram is more so used once you are editting you images rather than while shooting. Some may disagree with me on the above statements, but I find that it is unecessary to check the histogram regularly with the exception of certain shots where you are not sure whether you have too many blown out areas or too many totally dark areas in the shot. Hope that helps.
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Permalink Reply by Robin on -
Steve, If you are going to the August event, and are still unsure of the histogram, how about bringing your camera, and we can go over the histogram, what it means, and how to set it for general histogram, color channels, and "highlights".
Robin
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Permalink Reply by John A. Ares on -
I am of the Galen Rowell School and try to "expose for your most important highlight." This means that you need to pay attention to the RIGHT side of the histogram and be sure that you can see the right side of the "mountain" in black hit the x-axis at a "0" value. If the Mountain is cut off at the right, you are overexposed.
This is important early in a dive or dive trip. If you don't spend enough attention, your results will be poor. If you get too obsessed with this, you will spend all your time 'Chimping' and miss the dive or forget to check your air, computer, buddy, group, critters, etc.
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Permalink Reply by JasonDPG on
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Indeed. If you "expose to the right", meaning, you ensure your histogram is capturing highlights without clipping them, then you will have captured the highest possible tonal range of the scene. This may look a bit bright to you on your LCD, but you;'ll eventually get the eye for it and be able to adjust in Photoshop, Lightroom or whatever software you are using. That being said, once you know what you want to shoot, having a creative look and less tonal range may not be that big a deal.
People do spend way too much time obsessing about the histograms though, and that's such a great point about missing out on subjects and your safety as a result, I see topside shooters do this far more than underwater photographers.
Primarily, if you try to ensure that your histogram does not clip, and try to bracket your shots so you have one that looks "correct" in your LCD, and another exposed a stop or so brighter without clipping the right side of your histogram, you may in fact find that the latter shot is the one that will ultimately look best once corrected in post.
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Permalink Reply by MARCELLINO PIO RUSCA on -
Underwater all is difficult and moving fast. Point, focus & shot but fishes are a moving target. I haven't time to lokk at the histogram. In the post-processing things are differents.
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