Photography Basics: The Histogram.

Hey everyone, in this quick tip two minute video we're going to be talking about the histogram. I'm going to help you understand what it is so you can go out there and nail the exposure every time. And if you want to learn more in depth check out the link in the description below. So what is a histogram? Well it's this thing right here. It doesn't look too exciting and to be honest it's not really. But what it is, it's a graph that represents the amount of data that you've captured in your image. Or if it's on the live view screen it's showing you the data that you're about to capture. It's basically a representation of your exposure. To bring up the histogram on your camera just play around with the info button or the display button or of course just check out the camera's manual. Understanding how to read the histogram really takes the guesswork out of nailing your exposure. So how it works guys is the left hand side represents darkness or shadows and then as we move along to the right, the far right represents highlights with mid-tones being in between. As you adjust your exposure the amount of data that you're trying to collect will move along the histogram. So at the moment as I slow down the shutter you can see the data's moving to the right which is telling us we're getting a brighter exposure. If I speed up that shutter speed everything is going to the left and now we have a darker exposure. As a landscape photographer though this is the more common scene you're going to face. A high contrast scene, big dynamic range. In this scenario the histogram is going to be quite spread out. You've got a lot of brights and a lot of darks. What I recommend you do here is expose to the right. Get the histogram as bright as you can before you start to lose too much of those highlight details and then shoot the frame there. And what's involved later is in the post-processing lifting up those darker tones and you'll see that you've captured all the data. So think of it as capturing data in the field. It's not always possible to get the final result on the back of the camera. All right guys I hope that helped you out. Start using the histogram. It's really going to take the guesswork out of getting the exposure right, making sure you go home with all those juicy details in your image. I'll see you in the next video.