Equipment & Techniques > Beginner's Questions

Setting for JPEG Camera display-5DIII, to get best histogram and RAW capture

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Isaac:

--- Quote from: Rainer SLP on May 01, 2015, 05:05:38 pm ---Nowadays I catch myself peeking after every shot on the display screen, in order to later find out that the images are better or worse as seen in the display so I try not to lurk at the display anymore and rely on my experience from film days ...
--- End quote ---

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Check the display for obvious problems that will only be fixable by taking another photo.

bjanes:

--- Quote from: digitaldog on February 19, 2015, 04:00:48 pm ---Each camera is different but by and large, just ignore the histogram on the camera when shooting raw. It's mostly a lie.

--- End quote ---

Personally, I make frequent use of the histogram in my work, and ignoring it would be a mistake, IMHO. It is not a complete lie, but only the partial truth. One should perform tests to relate the appearance of the camera histogram to the status of the raw file. Here are results of such testing for the  Nikon D800e using a neutral picture control.

In this shot, the luminance histogram is just short of clipping.



The green channels of raw histogram are slightly more than 0.5 EV below clipping. This is a good ETTR exposure that allows 0.5 EV of highlight headroom. With the excellent performance of this sensor, it is not necessary to perform extreme ETTR.



Giving 0.3 EV additional exposure produces highlight clipping of the camera histogram.



The green channels of the raw histogram are about 0.3 EV short of clipping.



The take home point is that an ETTR exposure just short of clipping on the camera histogram will give a decent raw histogram, and slight clipping on the camera histogram will give an even better raw histogram, but with some danger of blown highlights. If one needs to evaluate the blue and red channel, UniWB can be used, but this is usually not worth the trouble unless one is dealing with saturated reds and blues where white balance will clip the camera RGB histogram with intact red or blue raw channels.

Regards,

Bill

digitaldog:

--- Quote from: bjanes on August 10, 2015, 07:17:47 am ---It is not a complete lie, but only the partial truth

--- End quote ---
Gotta say, if I ever need a good lawyer Bill, you're my man  ;D
All kidding aside, yes, it isn't a complete lie. But why should we be told half truths? When will we get a true raw histogram without a hack?
And there's still a huge world out there that believes that what they see on the LCD histogram is factual, not a half lie. They believe if they shoot for that lie, their raws (and JPEGs) are being optimally handled which of course isn't the case.
As a guy who captured a lot of images over many decades on film, the need for a histogram isn't essential to me, it would be far more useful if it told me the facts, not a half truth.

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