The best tip I ever got is when you're shooting in RAW (which should almost be always), set your photo style to B&W. When you review between shots, you can see just the contrast and exposure value without color giving you a false perspective. Then when you import the RAW file, everything is still full color. This helps a LOT with shooting colorful subjects, especially pure reds. You might review on your camera and think "that looks good", then realize later at home that it's over or under exposed.
AZREDFERN
As ever, you are indispensable to the photography community. Clarity, expertise, humanity, realism and an utter lack of pomposity. Thanks!
chrishorner
Another good tip that I got when I started taking photo's with a more professional camera, was to look at the scene, determine what's the most important there, determine if its in the highlights or shadows, and make sure you don't over or under expose in the histogram. If you are shooting a bride with white dress, underexposing the dark wall in the background is no big deal, clipping the white of the dress however is. and indeed, with a black cat it would be the other way around.
Also the advice was to not push it all the way to the limits, as the sensor usually resolves less detail towards the outer edges of the histogram.
esenel
Super informative video. I know most professionals shot in raw. I shot professionally for 30 years, the last 4 in digital. I exposed my digital images the same way I exposed film and always shot in Jpeg only. Much less time with post, and in the thousands of images, never had an exposure issue because I came from a film background and understood how to expose and understood lighting.
backwoodstrails
This is the nudge I needed to simply start paying attention to the histogram and to start getting a feel for the relationship between it and the shot I've taken.
Judging by what you've said in this (and the previous video), I will NOT be using the histogram to decide on my exposure. I'll be deciding the exposure myself and then looking at the histogram so I know what to expect in situations where I can't trust my LCD (bright sunny days).
Thanks again for this video Matt. You've become an absolutely invaluable resource when it comes to photography.
waynebelfast
Wow, this information about the camera not showing the histogram of the RAW file is really critical, and I didn't know that before!
shang-hsienyang
@2:30 - I couldn't resist "If it's going to be a Low Key kind of shot." Here's the funny: Loki is the name of Matt's cat! Ha! I love homonyms! They are some of my favorite words.
BTW - thanks for (once again?) explaining/teaching us about the histogram. You are so right: it all depends on the sort of shot you are aiming for Low Key, Mid Key, High Key, etc.
*Thank you for enlightening* me on the on camera Histogram vs the on computer Histogram. What a difference! I didn't know that cameras only show the Histogram of the JPEG file - that kinda sucks - not very accurate for me since I always shoot in RAW.
DarrenD
I liked that you made that very important point about the need to map what your scene is with what the histogram shows. There is big misconception about histogram. Almost everyone says that all you need is histogram to get perfect picture, which is not true. All you need is sense of what your scene is and how perfect histogram would look like for it and then you must map that imaginary histogram with the one on the camera. All that process is not very occurate because it involves a lot of guessing. In many cases it work just ok, but for the best result one still needs to rely on other tools.
Dmitryzakharov
New to photography and therefore watching a lot of video on various subjects.
I came across yours on Histograms and makes total sense as compared to a number of others I’ve viewed.
Subscribed 👍
danschardein
Probably the best nine minutes of basic histogram learning i have had. Cheers Matt
peterscott
Just stumbled on to your Chanel. What a clear explanation of a (supposedly) difficult topic. Also impressed by the quality of the responses. Chalk yourself up another subscriber.
mortimersnerd
RED cameras have solved the RAW exposure problem with their histogram display, making it super easy to get perfect RAW exposure. First there are two “goal posts”.
The left goal post bar shows the amount of pixels (up to 25% of the total image) that are underexposed or noisy. So when your left goal post fills to the top, then at least 25% of the RAW image is going to be noisy.
The right goal post shows the amount of pixels (up to 25%) that are overexposed or clipped.
Then there are traffic lights (red, green and blue) that light up to indicate which color channels are overexposed and clipped.
So assuming you don’t want to overexpose anything on the RED, just adjust your iris, shutter or ND until all the traffic lights just turn off. And you’ve also maximized the dynamic range because the brightest part of your scene is just below clipping.
Note that on the RED camera, the actual RGB histogram between the goal posts is affected by metadata settings like ISO and white balance, so don’t rely on it to avoid clipping or noise. Use the traffic lights and goal posts to properly expose RAW on RED.
Also remember that newer RED cameras have 17+ stops of dynamic range, so unless your scene has more dynamic range than can be captured by its sensor your left and right goal posts should never fill up. Every dark and bright part in the scene will be recorded by the sensor.
tonytangpro
Good information Matt. I don't think I'd seen that before a bout the difference in the jpeg and raw histogram. A subtle but important difference.
GeneWaddle
Dunno if you've mentioned this before, but shooting a bit in B&W will give folks some experience with seeing tonality.
omeshsingh
You are the one that's walking me through my photography. Educating, clarifying and explaining everything :) Thank You Matt
GLAXxan
Am new to photography and your tutorials have really made my work stand out. Thank you sir
chimba
super well explained! Thank you. Ive been shooting for about two years and only used the histogram a few times. Now that i want to get serious with my shooting, i see the importance.
clarity
from all review and tips I saw before, regardless from who, yours review and tips are the most relevant and I able to understand it without blowing my head. thanks a lot for the information.
mfaizalmohd
Best video about histograms on YouTube!! Everyone else just repeats the standard make sure you have blacks and whites stuff.
Rielestkid
This is the best explanation of the histogram that I have ever come across. Very informative. Thanks Matt.
