I want to talk to you about histograms and clarify three misconceptions that are so common out there I really don't think a lot of people are understanding what the histogram
a quick summary on what you're looking at there your histogram is the most reliable way when you're out shooting to look at to get an idea of what's going on with the exposure in your shot in you know a bright sunny day it can be hard to read the sea the exposure in your shot on the rear screen if your rear screen is up too bright or too dark it may appear like things are blown out when they haven't looking at your histogram will actually tell you in a graphical bar chart if you've hit perfect black or perfect white and remember in digital if you hit perfect black you can't recover that it's just going to go to gray there's no more detail there if you hit perfect white same story so it tells you how much of the different tones are actually in your file now first misconception out there is that there is an ideal type of histogram or types of histogram that you should be shooting for I hear this so often and I still read it in magazines it's absolute nonsense to say that this is a beautiful looking histogram it's got distribution all the way through it's got highlights as got mid-tones it's got shadows as lots of detail there that you can edit with that's what you should be aiming for that's just nonsense the histogram just tells you what is in the shot if you're taking a shot of the scene that you're seeing of me right now yes there's darks and there's mid-tones and there's highlights and there's brights and you would expect a reasonable distribution throughout the shot but if you were shooting my beautiful black cat on a black rug lit by candlelight and it is going to be a low-key shot that is faithful to the actual scene we're going to expect most of the shot is down in the shadow area in the left hand side of the histogram and if there are some distribution going up through the mid-tones and the highlights then we could probably say something's gone wrong because the actual shot didn't have that conversely if we're shooting a polar bear in the Sun in the snow the only darks were likely to see our little nose and paws the rest of it is going to be highlights almost White's if we're trying to reproduce it faithfully so when you're looking at your histogram don't be thinking about do I have a good distribution of tones you want to be looking at what's in the scene should there be shadows mid-tones highlights what should the distribution be and is my histogram showing that right or have I maybe overexposed or underexposed different paths okay now that leads importantly on to another one so that first point I think there's a lot of misinformation out there the second point I just think there's no information out there about it at all and that's the fact that you know I think most of us are shooting raw right when you're shooting an important shoot rather than just snapshots where you may use JPEG if you're going to actually work with the shot you're probably shooting raw we all know that it's got more information there it's not compressed all of that kind of thing so when you're shooting out and about you're shooting a landscape you've got your camera set to raw you're shooting away whether you've got the little bling keys on to indicate highlights or shadows or you're just looking at the histogram the histogram your camera shows you is based on the JPEG not on the raw file as far as I know there's no cameras out there that actually show you a raw file histogram as of January 2017 however when you bring that into your computer and you actually go to edit it your editing software shows you the histogram for the raw file and that's important because the raw file has more information it's you know to think of it it's a bigger chart it's got more range in there so do the test for yourself if you go out with your camera just set to raw take a shot I'll do it out my window here to show you as well here I'm looking on to Manhattan and keep increasing your exposure compensation until it's getting really bright and you see that your highlights have hit the far right so you should be a perfect white and unrecoverable data in your shot then you can do the opposite keep dropping your exposure until you are hitting the left and pure black in your shot and you should be you know unrecoverable data but because that's the JPEG histogram when you bring the files into your computer and check them there you'll see you're not actually hitting the top you're not actually hitting though the bottom if you really push it then yes of course there you will hit those but your JPEG shows that you're hitting them earlier than you are now why is that important well if you're trying to really you know get meaty shadows and you're worried about going too far so you're bringing the exposure back up well it's just miss is just wrong because on your actual file your raw file you have that extra latitude there so you can take it you know you'll need to do a bit of planning and testing to get to know your own gear but you can find that you've actually got that extra bit of latitude that when you think oh I may have screwed up the shot so I'll just delete the file don't because you might find that you actually didn't hit perfect black or white and there's still latitude for you to edit your shots do the test you'll see that it's correct now the final one and I don't think this is nearly as important as the other two but that's that even if you keep all of your settings the same but you change your lens don't expect the same histogram from your shot so if I get say my 70 to 200 F 2.8 and then I get my 105 and I put them both to 2.8 and I put them both to 105 and then I to keep all of the shutter speed and higher so the same your histogram still gonna vary a little bit if nothing else if you don't understand t-stops then check out the video that's in the caption in the cards above but different lenses transmit a different amount of light or they steal a different amount of light or they lose a different amount of light so that's one aspect then others some lenses will vignette moreso parts of the shots that were brighter and one will be darker in the other some lenses will handle flare better so if one lens really flares badly once there's highlights in the shot you might find that that it you know plays with the highlights that you're actually seeing in your histogram again because the histogram is just telling you what is in the shot it's not aspirational it's just an accurate measurement of the exact data that has been recorded and that's how you need to look at it it's an extremely useful tool as I say in the video that I've linked above you want to make a histogram your best friend especially if you're shooting creative stuff so if I were out and I'm trying to do a shot where I have like I'm using off-camera flash and I'm going to create a little pool of light which have again a dance or throw a video card above for that video and I want to have most of the scene almost black but then I want to have a bright spotlight on someone and I want to make sure that I don't lose the exposure on either that's where checking your histogram and you know playing with it and being aspirational about your final result makes sense but if you're just taking a shot of a scene you just want to make sure does the histogram reflect the reality if you're trying to represent it faithfully
a quick summary on what you're looking at there your histogram is the most reliable way when you're out shooting to look at to get an idea of what's going on with the exposure in your shot in you know a bright sunny day it can be hard to read the sea the exposure in your shot on the rear screen if your rear screen is up too bright or too dark it may appear like things are blown out when they haven't looking at your histogram will actually tell you in a graphical bar chart if you've hit perfect black or perfect white and remember in digital if you hit perfect black you can't recover that it's just going to go to gray there's no more detail there if you hit perfect white same story so it tells you how much of the different tones are actually in your file now first misconception out there is that there is an ideal type of histogram or types of histogram that you should be shooting for I hear this so often and I still read it in magazines it's absolute nonsense to say that this is a beautiful looking histogram it's got distribution all the way through it's got highlights as got mid-tones it's got shadows as lots of detail there that you can edit with that's what you should be aiming for that's just nonsense the histogram just tells you what is in the shot if you're taking a shot of the scene that you're seeing of me right now yes there's darks and there's mid-tones and there's highlights and there's brights and you would expect a reasonable distribution throughout the shot but if you were shooting my beautiful black cat on a black rug lit by candlelight and it is going to be a low-key shot that is faithful to the actual scene we're going to expect most of the shot is down in the shadow area in the left hand side of the histogram and if there are some distribution going up through the mid-tones and the highlights then we could probably say something's gone wrong because the actual shot didn't have that conversely if we're shooting a polar bear in the Sun in the snow the only darks were likely to see our little nose and paws the rest of it is going to be highlights almost White's if we're trying to reproduce it faithfully so when you're looking at your histogram don't be thinking about do I have a good distribution of tones you want to be looking at what's in the scene should there be shadows mid-tones highlights what should the distribution be and is my histogram showing that right or have I maybe overexposed or underexposed different paths okay now that leads importantly on to another one so that first point I think there's a lot of misinformation out there the second point I just think there's no information out there about it at all and that's the fact that you know I think most of us are shooting raw right when you're shooting an important shoot rather than just snapshots where you may use JPEG if you're going to actually work with the shot you're probably shooting raw we all know that it's got more information there it's not compressed all of that kind of thing so when you're shooting out and about you're shooting a landscape you've got your camera set to raw you're shooting away whether you've got the little bling keys on to indicate highlights or shadows or you're just looking at the histogram the histogram your camera shows you is based on the JPEG not on the raw file as far as I know there's no cameras out there that actually show you a raw file histogram as of January 2017 however when you bring that into your computer and you actually go to edit it your editing software shows you the histogram for the raw file and that's important because the raw file has more information it's you know to think of it it's a bigger chart it's got more range in there so do the test for yourself if you go out with your camera just set to raw take a shot I'll do it out my window here to show you as well here I'm looking on to Manhattan and keep increasing your exposure compensation until it's getting really bright and you see that your highlights have hit the far right so you should be a perfect white and unrecoverable data in your shot then you can do the opposite keep dropping your exposure until you are hitting the left and pure black in your shot and you should be you know unrecoverable data but because that's the JPEG histogram when you bring the files into your computer and check them there you'll see you're not actually hitting the top you're not actually hitting though the bottom if you really push it then yes of course there you will hit those but your JPEG shows that you're hitting them earlier than you are now why is that important well if you're trying to really you know get meaty shadows and you're worried about going too far so you're bringing the exposure back up well it's just miss is just wrong because on your actual file your raw file you have that extra latitude there so you can take it you know you'll need to do a bit of planning and testing to get to know your own gear but you can find that you've actually got that extra bit of latitude that when you think oh I may have screwed up the shot so I'll just delete the file don't because you might find that you actually didn't hit perfect black or white and there's still latitude for you to edit your shots do the test you'll see that it's correct now the final one and I don't think this is nearly as important as the other two but that's that even if you keep all of your settings the same but you change your lens don't expect the same histogram from your shot so if I get say my 70 to 200 F 2.8 and then I get my 105 and I put them both to 2.8 and I put them both to 105 and then I to keep all of the shutter speed and higher so the same your histogram still gonna vary a little bit if nothing else if you don't understand t-stops then check out the video that's in the caption in the cards above but different lenses transmit a different amount of light or they steal a different amount of light or they lose a different amount of light so that's one aspect then others some lenses will vignette moreso parts of the shots that were brighter and one will be darker in the other some lenses will handle flare better so if one lens really flares badly once there's highlights in the shot you might find that that it you know plays with the highlights that you're actually seeing in your histogram again because the histogram is just telling you what is in the shot it's not aspirational it's just an accurate measurement of the exact data that has been recorded and that's how you need to look at it it's an extremely useful tool as I say in the video that I've linked above you want to make a histogram your best friend especially if you're shooting creative stuff so if I were out and I'm trying to do a shot where I have like I'm using off-camera flash and I'm going to create a little pool of light which have again a dance or throw a video card above for that video and I want to have most of the scene almost black but then I want to have a bright spotlight on someone and I want to make sure that I don't lose the exposure on either that's where checking your histogram and you know playing with it and being aspirational about your final result makes sense but if you're just taking a shot of a scene you just want to make sure does the histogram reflect the reality if you're trying to represent it faithfully
Hello, my name is Avinash Masram.' i have most interest in Technology also in video editing.
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