How to get the best raw exposure, part 2

My problem is that in-camera histograms don't help a raw shooter.
I'm not sure a photographer needs to know what a histogram is to get a happy exposure ;)

They're certainly not ideal in the present situation, but I still think they are helpful once you understand their limitations.

Come ON, Donald !!

You said "cool so that means i can accurately set my auto wb against the RGB histogram ?"

Iliah said "What???" and I responded to explain my view of your wacky statement.

Must be hard ... (wink)

While in-camera histograms do not match the raw data, they can help prevent blown highlights in most cases. What they cannot help is pushing the exposure to its optimum. Being a stop conservative with exposure at base ISO is often good enough, though it would be nice if we could eke the last photon out of the scene.

When higher ISOs are needed to maintain brightness, the noise visibility increases and the optimal exposure is more critical. In that case, we need the histogram to prevent highlight clipping by reducing ISO while keeping exposure as large as possible.

When you need to crank up the ISO, you no longer need to know where the upper end of the raw histogram is.

Not so sure about 'most', but what I'm saying is that there are simpler and less confusing tools that can provide necessary warnings for a raw shooter. Those tools don't take as much space, too. Say, zebras from raw, a counter for clipped pixels, and a user-programmable saturation value.

Yes, that is much better formulated than I tried :). In that case, the only function of histograms/zebras/blinkies is to prevent clipping.

that was a lot of fun tests shooting a waxy surface yellow leaf. 150mmx100mm in direct sun light. my a74 histogram and blinkies were spot on within the range of the cameras 1/3 stop accuracy. so a max exposed raw processed was no better than a normal exposed jpeg. why i like to keep things simple.

edit , id better change my camera back to compressed raw from uncompressed.

That's certainly not the case for the histogram with the example you posted earlier. The red channel of the in-camera histogram was way off.

fixed that by a simple WB calibration in camera .it was a very fine adjustment. to pull the reds back. the waveform meter on my field monitor was also perfect when shooting the image.

Maybe you have, maybe you haven't fixed it. Post the raw files and images of the histograms.

It was already shown by Jim your claim below was not true.

Jim doesnt need you to hold his hand. Go find someone else to stalk with your silly comments.

Of course he doesn't. He, Illiah and Bob know a lot more about this stuff than I do and even more than what you think you do 🙂

If you stop making false claims then I and other people won't have a reason to correct or question you 😎

I'm afraid you are up to another disappointment.

At least there is some headway being made here, the realization that WB will influence how the cameras histogram will look.

It only took a multitude of posts across at least 3 threads to get us here

For the camera histogram I would have thought that is common knowledge since the camera's histogram is for the jpeg processed from the raw data.

The WB setting in the camera has no effect on the raw data itself and so WB is actually set in the raw converter in post. The WB setting is applied in camera during the camera's internal conversion of the raw data to a jpeg image on the lcd screen.

Hi Jim, thanks for sharing. I think the idea behind the article is really excellent, but I think the execution is slightly less than perfect. I am assuming you wanted to make the topic accessible to those with less of a scientific/engineering mind and education, and while e.g. the rain/bucket analogy is quite excellent for that, I think you still go too fast. Your writing style is probably difficult (and not enjoyable) to parse for the average lay-person due to your habit of stating things very precisely (with difficult jargon) and exactly once.

I'll probably never get around to it, but I would love to show you some examples of how I would re-phrase things to make it a bit easier to read and understand.

Of course I might be completely mistaken, so take this criticism with a grain of salt. And please understand that I definitely appreciate your effort, and that contributions of experts like you are what made me come back to the old dpreview again and again.

now ive called in the big guns on thiis one
kenrockwell.com/tech/yrgb.htm