Three Common Misconceptions About Histograms in Photography
If you are a relatively seasoned photographer, you probably have a basic understanding of your camera’s histogram, a graphic that acts like rendering the light in a scene. But it is often misunderstood and often misused.
Basically, the histogram represents all the light in the scene, with the left side of the graph reflecting the shadows and the right side showing the highlights (with midtones in the middle). You might think that this means that a good exposure will have a very even distribution, but this is not necessarily the case; There is no such thing as a “perfect” histogram. Rather, it’s just a reflection of what’s in your photo, so in a predominantly dark scene, the graphics won’t have a lot of midtones or highlights, but that doesn’t mean it’s poor exposure.
And then, interestingly, even if you shoot in RAW, the histogram you see in your camera is based on JPG. This means that when you go to edit a photo on your computer, you actually have a little more data to work with. If it looked like you were highlighting your highlights, chances are there is still some wiggle room when editing the raw photo.
Finally, different lenses will result in different histograms, even if you’re dealing with the same scene, shutter speed, and ISO. It seems obvious when you think about it, but each lens will affect light differently, and since the histogram is just a visualization of what’s in the frame, changing the glass will change the graph. A histogram is useful when you understand it and understand that there is no perfect histogram. It is a tool, not an aspiration.
Do you understand your histogram? | Matt Granger via PetaPixel