Understanding Histograms

Just when I thought I knew a thing or two about histograms, along comes a post on dpreview that opens my eyes to new possibilities. To read the post, click here. I think I will print this out and put a copy in my bag for future reference.

What is a histogram? It's that graph thing that is overlaid on your photo in playback mode (depending on your playback settings). On the Nikon system, the histogram is one of several options in the playback menu. On my D3, I can display a single histogram, or separate red-green-blue channel histograms. Before reading this post, I knew it was good to avoid hitting either end of the spectrum, to avoid loss of detail in the blacks (left end) and highlights (right end), but that was about it. Now, when I look at a histogram, I see much more information. Check it out.