Histograms and Exposure Compensation: more beginner explanations

A histogram is a graph that shows how the breakdown of light in a scene or image. There is no one right histogram, its more about identifying if there is a proper range of true black and true white in an image. When aiming your camera at a scene, with the histogram displayed in real time, you can see that the lighter the scene, the more the graph leans to the right, the end that corresponds to white. The opposite is also true, the darker or the more true black in the scene, the more data is shown on the left side of the graph.

We can see the difference in the histogram for these two scenes, the exposure on one is a little dark, but decent. The other is obviously way too dark, both could probably be fixed, but it’s always smart to get a good shot in the first place. These two photos were taken using the exposure compensation feature, it’s the little black and white, plus/minus button on most cameras.

Some helpful exposure and lighting terms:

white balance

Cameras often have different settings preset to account for the lighting in a scene. The above photos are obvious, one was taken in cloudy light, with the cloudy setting, and the very blue hued one was taken on a cloudy day with a tungsten light setting, mean to offset the yellow of tungsten lights.

bracketing

Bracketing is the practice of taking a set of photos, with different exposure settings to bracket the best exposure, in case the screen of your camera (which isn’t always as accurate as we want) lies to you in post-production. By having a slightly over exposed and under exposed photo to go with your perceived perfect exposure, you can composite the photos if needed to get the best exposure.

underexposed/correctly exposed/overexposed