Histograms

Frustrated that I have to ask this question:
Was messing w/ my new 3100 today after re-discovering the importance of histograms...for some reason, I had one on the screen for the first few but the succeeding pics displayed w/o...what gives? I DID RTFD's but, nothing in there [a REALLY poor statement in user manual!] Went online but couldn't figure out what had gone astray...I was messing w/ A, P, M, etc...but the HG never did appear again...if anyone could enlighten me, I'd appreciate it. Thanx...

...john

I can see the histogram on my D5100 when I use the same button as for previewing the photos using to scroll the pics.

You the button were OK is and the 4 arrows.

Vertical scrolling and the histogram shows up.

siamthai1 said:

I can see the histogram on my D5100 when I use the same button as for previewing the photos using to scroll the pics.

You the button were OK is and the 4 arrows.

Vertical scrolling and the histogram shows up.

Click to expand...

Excellent! Thanx! The lingering question is, why it isn't on the view screen immediately after taking the shot...as it was earlier today...but, this works...!

On all of my cameras, image preview will return to whatever state it was on when I last used preview. So if you turn the histogram off when you're done looking at an image it will be off when you go to the next one.

BackdoorHippie said:

On all of my cameras, image preview will return to whatever state it was on when I last used preview. So if you turn the histogram off when you're done looking at an image it will be off when you go to the next one.

Click to expand...

Correct. Your preview screen will stay put, but it's easy to bump that button and get a different preview mode than what you want. Sometimes you just have scroll through them until you get the one you want.

What works for me is setting the preview to display the most basic setting (the one with the least amount of information showing at the bottom) so I can eyeball the shot immediatlely. From there I press the button "down" one click and my histogram appears.

Can anyone give me a very quick, headline refresher (or point me in the direction of one) about how to use and interpret the histograms and how they can be useful? Thank you

Histograms are about the greatest thing to come along since digital photography itself. If you don't know how to use them you owe it to yourself to take the five or ten minutes it will take you to become an expert...

Luminous Landscape (dot) com to the rescue! ::: Understanding Histograms




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Thanks Horoscope Fish - much appreciated and it was a very good overview.

AJS said:

Thanks Horoscope Fish - much appreciated and it was a very good overview.

Click to expand...

You're welcome. That's the article that really demystified Histograms for me. The thing to remember is a histogram does *NOT* tell you if you're exposure is correct or not. It graphically shows you the amount of shadow, mid-tones and highlights in a photo; you still have to look at what you're shooting, then your histogram and interpret what the histogram is telling you. If you have a lot of bright sky in your shot, you should EXPECT the resultant histogram to have a lot of spikiness at the right end... Because your photo has a lot of "spikiness at the right end". That's not the same thing as over-exposure. Same thing goes for shadow. Lots of dark subject matter in the shot *should* show a bias toward the left side of the display, that doesn't mean your shot is under-exposed. See the difference? It's a critical thing to understand.


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