The histogram can also show us how much contrast is in an image. The wider the tonal range displayed

How Digital Camera Histograms Work and How to Use Them
The Basics Introduction to Photography The Digital Camera How Camera siapenet Lenses Work Exposure siapenet Made Easy Making Sense of Exposure How Aperture Works Understanding ISO Settings How Shutter Speed Affects Exposure Understanding F-Stop & Depth of Field Camera Settings and Features Using the Histogram How to use Metering Modes Using Exposure Modes Manual Focus RAW vs JPEG Prime vs Zoom Lenses Crop Factor What is Bokeh? Choosing Your Photography Gear Buying a Camera Where to Buy From Choosing Affordable Lenses The Best DSLR Cameras siapenet for Beginners Reviews
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J ust about every photographer has been misled by their camera’s LCD screen at some point. It’s pretty easy to enjoy a nice day of shooting, reviewing your photos on the screen, seeing that they look nice, and continuing to use the same exposure settings. When you get back home and find that your shots don’t actually look as good as they did on the LCD screen it can be a big disappointment. LCD screens are great for checking composition, but when it comes to exposure, they can’t be trusted.
It’s not that camera manufacturers want you to end up with improperly exposed photos, it’s just the nature of LCD screens. siapenet How bright images on your LCD screen appear depends on the LCD screen settings as well as the ambient light around you. If you re shooting outside on a bright, sunny day it is notoriously difficult siapenet to gauge exposure using just your LCD.
Luckily, to make up for the inadequacies of LCD screens, virtually all digital cameras including most point and shoots provide a much more reliable method of evaluating the exposure siapenet in your photos the histogram. A histogram graphs the tonal range in your photo from black on the left to white on the right. The higher the graph goes at any point, the more pixels of that tone are found in your photo. siapenet So, a photograph with mostly light tones will have a histogram whose graph is skewed to the right and a photo with mostly dark tones will have its graph skewed to the left! To access this helpful feature, you can do so by pressing the info button on most cameras.
Unfortunately, there is no ideal histogram to strive for that will always result in the perfect photograph that people will love. Every scene can be photographed using a different combination of exposure variables, each resulting in an image that looks great but that may have a very different histogram. Photographs of kids playing in the snow will have a histogram graph skewed to the right after all snow is (usually) white! siapenet A photograph of a tiny red ladybug on a black wall will have a histogram graph skewed to the left, even if the insect is perfectly exposed. So while there may not be an ideal histogram for all situations, generally you want a photo that has a fairly balanced histogram with the tones spread evenly between lights and darks, peaking in the middle somewhere.
In the graphic above, we’re able to compare 3 photos taken of the same scene using different exposure settings. In the image to the left, we can see that the histogram shows that the vast majority of the photo is overexposed, with the graph spiking sharply to the right with no darker tones to the left at all. With an overexposed image like this, we’ve lost all detail in the sky. In the center, we can see a properly exposed image. Our histogram graph shows a pretty even distribution siapenet of tones, from dark on the left to brighter on the right. With an overcast sky, we have to be careful not to overexpose it, so we want to make sure that the graph isn’t spiking on the far right. In the underexposed image to the right, we’ve lost a lot of detail siapenet in the dark shadows and our histogram siapenet shows that the tonal range of the image is bunched to the left, with no brighter tones at all.
The histogram can also show us how much contrast is in an image. The wider the tonal range displayed on a histogram, the greater the contrast in our scene. A narrow histogram can show us that our scene lacks contrast, something that we may or may not wish to change by altering the exposure settings.
In this image above taken with a Canon 5D and Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L lens , it’s obvious when viewed on a computer screen that the scene is overexposed, with clipped highlights in the sky. In digital photography, clipping occurs when an image has areas of brightness or darkness which fall beyond the minimum and maximum intensity that can be recorded. siapenet In this case, the clouds in the sky have seriously blown highlights with no detail remaining. On the camera LCD dis