You shoot RAW, so what, your exposures suck...

[Lost Canadian]

...but it's not your fault. Well it is partly, but your camera could be lying to you. A while back I figured out that my camera likes to lie. Yes, I read all the stuff on exposing using the RGB histogram, keeping the exposure to the right but trying not to let it clip unless that's what I was after, yada yada yada and I thought I was doing OK. But what no one told me was that my camera would be lying to me, and the result was my RAW files didn't have the range I'd thought they should. You see, your histogram is only as good as your in camera settings, those wonderful presets you see like vivid, neutral, standard etc. Those settings really effect your histogram. If you are using your histogram to judge exposure, like I do, and you have your camera set to vivid, what you're really seeing in the histogram is a representation of the jpg you'd get using those settings, it is not necessarily the entire range of what the RAW file contains. It kind of makes using the histogram to judge exposure useless for RAW shooters because it's wrong, at least that's what I first thought.

Here's what I figured out. Now perhaps everyone already knew this and I am just that dumb kid getting here late, if so you can go to the next thread, if not stay with me. What I've found is that knowing your camera and setting it up to best reflect what you'll get out of a RAW file is key if you're really trying to get the most out of your RAW files. So what is best you ask. Not suprising now that I think of it, but the answer is boring. Dull, drab, flat, meh, whatever you want to call it. If you want to see what your cameras sensor is really recording via the histogram you have to set your in camera settings to boring. For you Nikon guys that means dialing in the profile to neutral, and dropping the contrast down to -2. Canon and other guys, you'll be similar, the key is to make your settings as flat and boring as possible. You images will look like crap on your LCD but that's OK because all you really care to see is if your exposure is good. With flat settings and using your histogram as the reference point you should see a relatively linear representation of what your sensor saw. It won't be perfect but it will be a heck of a lot more accurate then those vivid or even standard settings which will be way off and give you a skewed histogram.

The second part, as I mentioned, is knowing your camera. Even with the flat settings your histogram is going to be lying to you a bit. What I've found with my camera is that I can typically recover about 1.5 stops and find detail in areas that would have been shown to be blown out on the histogram, even with the flat settings. This is good to know when I'm judging just how blown out an image 'appears' to be on the histogram. If it's only a small clip I can be fairly confident that the RAW file will contain information that's not being shown on the histogram so I need not worry, if it's a lot then I can decide if I want to dial the exposure back a touch, bust out a filter, or live with it.

If you want to see what I mean give it a try. Take two identical pictures changing only the profiles, and look at the histograms. You'll be suprised at how different they look, and by they I mean the histogram.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Very good advise Trevor. I knew about the camera settings effecting the JPG previews but I didn't understand the impact to the histograms. I'll try that on my Canon 50D. It makes perfect sense how you explained it. Thanks.

 

[Ludedude]

Interesting. I know my D50 likes to overexpose a little but I never gave much thought to the histograms being out of whack like that. Thanks for giving me something else to play with

 

[taco2go]

Great tutorial
My settings: Neutral in camera AND typically Camera Faithful in Lightroom.

 

[almac]

i never did understand all the photographers out there that spend more time worrying about "histograms" than taking pictures...

histograms? who cares?
if its too dark, open up a stop, if too light, the reverse...
think your light meter is not working properly? shoot a grey card and see what happens.

histograms dont take good pictures, YOU take the pictures.

ive had my D700 for 2 years now. i don't think ive ever paid any attention to histograms.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Well then show us what you've done by not paying attention to the exposure. We all know that we make the pictures but getting the most out of what we're after is the point of this post.

 

[photoman]

http://aaronnewman.smugmug.com/

Pick one. eepwall:

I don't shoot by histogram or worry about the technical details like many others. I know how my LCD image relates to what I get at home on the computer.

I am not knocking your post or the information- just never felt the need to figure out why there was a difference or what that difference might actually be. I am sure learning the technical side of digital photography would make me a better photographer but shooting by sight and feel has been pretty good to me.

The technical side is like a foreign language to me.

 

[taco2go]

Wow Aaron, you are a gifted photographer. That is a top-notch incredibly well rounded portfolio. :Wow1: Always love your work.

However- I think we're still missing the point of Trevor's post. I don't much use Histograms either, and am much more of an intuitive picture taker as well. But I can appreciate the discipline of learning how that graphical representation reflects something composed out of sheer inspiration, and how it relates to exposure.
I thought Trevor did a great job explaining his discovery- it may just be a vital building block for someone learning the language

"technical details" is a loaded phrase- There are tremendous technical details at work in even the most cavalier of captures. Some people play music by ear, some read tabs- the end result can be equally captivating.

Anyway- it's just a different language as you so correctly state.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Here's the thing, if you don't care about making good exposures with digital and could care less about the technical aspects of photography thats fine. This thread was intended to share information with others who do.

The thing that's great about digital which really separates it from the days of film is the ability to check, among other things, good exposure. As I mentioned however, how accurate that feedback is can depend on certain variables as set up within your camera. I'm sure if Ansel Adams had a way to check exposure he would have loved it. Because he did not have that luxury though he hade to make himself into a technical wizard as far as knowning how to make precise exposures. He did create the zone system after all. His Moonrise over Hernandez is great example of technical proficiency. He knew, how and why I have no idea, but he knew, the luminance value of the moon at that time of day and used some archaic method of converting the lumens to EV and from there he was able to apply his zone system to the rest of the scene to render what is arguably one of the most highly regarded shots ever taken. And to think, he only had time to get one plate before the light changed on him. Quite different from the digital shotgun approach.

Fast forward to today, and we're like lazy kids. We have the luxury of not needing to know anything about exposure. All we need to do is point, shoot and if we're really picky, check a histogram. I mean by all measures checking the histogram is rather simplistic and easy compared to what someone like Adams knew and applied, but to each their own.

 

[taco2go]

What I was alluding to in my first post is that every RAW converter also has it's own set of callibrated presets- which will also alter the histogram of the RAW file.
Eg: in Lightroom- Adobe std, vs Portrait, vs, Neutral vs Landscape etc.
So that may be another area to eye the histogram- or you can use your chi to float the photo through whichever feels best.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Just to kind of give you a visual as to why I personally think using this stuff is useful here are a few shots I took that I probably wouldn't have got right without the aid of the histogram. In #1, most cameras would have rendered the scene brighter, which would have blown out the moon. Using the histogram though I dialed back the exposure just a touch, allowing the highlights, (the moon) to be pushed to the very edge, without actually losing detail. Doing this also provided me with good detail in the shodows without having to resort to heavy fill light which would have induced a lot of noise. Shot #2 is very similar in that my goal was to keep detail in the stars and the clouds without them turning into trails or a big white smear but provide enough light to the scene to actually make an image. This still took me about 3 or 4 attempts to get it to the point I wanted but without the histogram to measure the exposure of the scene, I would have had a lot of trouble with it.

#3 and #4. Again it was about retaining details in the brightest areas as well as the shadows to render images with the widest dynamic range possible. The tree shot was actually underexposed by more than 2.5 stops but it gave me the cool shadows I was looking for which contrasted nicely, I thought, with the warmth of the rising sun. It represents how that morning felt to me perfectly. With #4 it was about having a scene bright enough but not allowing the rock on the left and the other highights to go supernova on me.

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Again, this is just how I do things, you may do it differently but I simply figured I share something useful to me that may be helpful to others.

 

[Lost Canadian]

What I was alluding to in my first post is that every RAW converter also has it's own set of callibrated presets- which will also alter the histogram of the RAW file.
Eg: in Lightroom- Adobe std, vs Portrait, vs, Neutral vs Landscape etc.
So that may be another area to eye the histogram- or you can use your chi to float the photo through whichever feels best.

That's a good point to make Joash. The difference however, at least in the case of exposure, is once you have what you want and the details are there, you are free to bend it any way you see fit without compromise to quality. If you're concerned with actually eeking the most dynamic range out of your raw files however, well that starts with the actual in camera exposure, and that is where I find having a histogram accurately reflect what is captured on the sensor to be helpful. That was my point to the thread.

Cheers

 

[sjk99]

Lost,
Thanks for the though provoking posts. If I had taken the tree picture the shadows would be coal black and the trunk probably over exposed.

I do look at the histogram (an old D70s) but usually follow the "push it as far as possible to the right without going over" approach. If I understand what you are saying correctly the settings for Optimize Image (vivid, sharper, softer, landscape, etc.,) effect what you see in the preview screen which can mislead you about what the raw image is capturing?

 

[Lost Canadian]

Lost,
Thanks for the though provoking posts. If I had taken the tree picture the shadows would be coal black and the trunk probably over exposed.

I do look at the histogram (an old D70s) but usually follow the "push it as far as possible to the right without going over" approach. If I understand what you are saying correctly the settings for Optimize Image (vivid, sharper, softer, landscape, etc.,) effect what you see in the preview screen which can mislead you about what the raw image is capturing?

Forget the image displayed on the back. What are your "Optimize Image" settings set to? Those settings actually effect the accuracy of your histogram. If you have your "Optimize Image" settings set to vivid for instance, and you use your histogram, it is going to give you the impression that you have a lot less dynamic range captured then is actually true. This may lead you to believe that you need to push your exposure one way or another to gain detail either in the shadows or the highlights when exposure comp may not actually be needed. That's what I mean when I said the histogram lies. To get it to be as truthful to the actual RAW capture as is possible, flat "Optimize Image" settings are best.

 

[taco2go]

The tree shot was actually underexposed by more than 2.5 stops but it gave me the cool shadows I was looking for which contrasted nicely, I thought, with the warmth of the rising sun.
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^^Probably the scenario where I rely on the histogram the most, and refer to the LCD image with more than a grain of salt. Pictures with heavy shadows, and interesting contrast.