Using the Histogram to get the best exposure

 

Your DSLR has a very powerful exposure meter on it, but it also has a useful feature to go beyond simple metering.

When you review a photo on you screen and you press INFO it should show a histogram similar to the image at the top.  In the case of Canon camera,  the more to the left the darker the image, the more to right the lighter the image.  This eliminates any errors or failure of the rear screen viewer to render the image properly, particularly in difficult to view lighting.

To do so, take a test photo of your subject and look at the histogram.  Now if it is too dark, adjust exposure compensation a click or two brighter and take another,  review the histogram.  The intent is to just get the right most area of the graph just at, but not against the right limit.  The example at the right above for Bright Image shows too much bright, that is, information in your photo is be bleached out, and no amount of post-processing can fix it.  On the other hand, the Dark Image sample could still be saved with a bit of lightening if needed.

 

And... even better, if your camera has live view.. like Canons have had for over a decade, enable exposure compensation, usually this means enabling the wheel at the rear of body, Then turn on live view,  You should see your subject photo on the rear screen, now press INFO.  The histogram should appear and change as you move the camera to slightly different views.  Press the shutter button halfway down to trigger the light meter and now as you rotate the exposure adjustment wheel, the histogram should change reflecting the new exposure setting.  Once you have the histogram showing as high as possible to the right without running into the upper limit, take your photo.

Who know...

For some further reading on this, visit PHOTONEW.CA   Besides, it is great free photo magazine.

 

 

http://www.photonews.ca/MV_Photo_News/Issues/autumn2018/autumn2018.pdf   for PART 1 starting at page 40 and

http://www.photonews.ca/MV_Photo_News/Issues/winter2019/winter2019.pdf   for PART 2 starting at page 38

AND

 For  a nice little video lecture about subject, can be found on You Tube presented by Canon.

  Run time about 6 Minutes

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xcblx-zCR4&ab_channel=CanonUSA

 

This is likely not what you are going to be doing during a sports event, but for that perfect landscape, or still life...

And then there is night photography... Camera on tripod, set to manual exposure mode, now you can play with various setting and see your results.  Again trying to keep exposure within the desired limits. 

 Enjoy taking photos