using the Histogram..

[Jay H]

Ack, I almost put "Hysterectomy" in my subject whew...

Playing with my new FX35, it has a mode where you can display the Histogram on the LCD when in "rec" mode and before you take a picture. It seems to allow you to adjust the exposure value (+/- X.X) so you can properly expose your shots.. How often does one do this? does it seem better to allow the camera to use it's light meter and don't use it much or do you guys who take scenery shots in various lighting conditions use it a lot? Any tips for the casual photographer?

I can adjust the exposure and also the sensitivity of my camera but the FX35 has a whole lot of specific "modes" it calls "scenes" in addition to the usual nighttime modes, including some really odd ones like "Pets" and "Babies".

it also has a neet self-portrait mode where it uses the timer-light on the lens side of the camera as the 'focus indictor" so you can do those arm-length shots of yourself when solo. You know the camera is in-focus when the timer-light goes solid yellow.

Jay

 

[darren]

Histogram on the LCD when in "rec" mode and before you take a picture. It seems to allow you to adjust the exposure value (+/- X.X) so you can properly expose your shots.. How often does one do this? does it seem better to allow the camera to use it's light meter and don't use it much or do you guys who take scenery shots in various lighting conditions use it a lot? Any tips for the casual photographer?

You can use that in tough light situations - like sunset, sunrise, low light, bright snow etc. For everyday point and shoot shots you can probably use the meter most of the time.

- darren

 

[DougPaul]

Histograms are an analysis of pixel intensities of the actual picture and thus are a "super lightmeter". If the lighting conditions are difficult, I take the first image using the light meter and check the histogram. If it indicates an exposure problem, I adjust the exposure and retake the picture. As Darren noted, the built-in light meter generally does an adequate job in easy lighting conditions.

RGB histograms are better than intensity histograms--the colors saturate independently of each other.

More info at:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/histograms.htm
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/yrgb.htm
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

There are also several related prior threads that can be found by searching on the word "histogram".

Doug

 

[Jay H]

Thanks Darren and Doug, pretty informative links there..

Jay