You don’t need to be a camera guru to understand the histogram on your digital camera. It only means that you need to learn more about your camera and its features. To get an optimum exposure and not lose any data, it is important to interpret your digital camera’s histogram to comprehend what it means and make the appropriate exposure adjustments.
Well, what is a digital camera histogram and what do you do with it? This would be a great time to pull the manual out for your digital camera and learn how to display the histogram on the camera’s LCD display. On most digital cameras the histogram can be enabled so it displays every time you take a photo. To explain it briefly, it is a graph that shows the level of brightness of an image from the very darkest levels on the left (value 0) to the very brightest on the right (value 255), on the horizontal axis. 
The graph’s height, vertical axis, is the measure of the density of image pixels of a particular tonal value. The taller the graph for a particular tonal value the more shades of that tone will display in the photo. As you can see from the histogram on the left, there are a lot of pixels between the mid-tones and highlights. This is a histogram from a photo of Badwater in Death Valley which because of the bright sodium deposits most of the pixels will be somewhere between the mid-tones in the center and the highlights.
Some histograms also display separate graphs for the level of brightness and pixel density for the three primary colors- Red, Green and Blue (RGB). The histogram also displays in many photo editing software programs including Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture, among others.
Now that you have a better understanding of your digital camera’s histogram, we can move on to how you evaluate the exposure of a photograph. After you’ve taken a photo and you are viewing the graph on your LCD display, ideally you want to see most of the graph’s pixel density between the left and right brackets. Continue Reading »
Looks like there are going to be some amazing new features in the upcoming release of Photoshop CS6. The video shows a couple of really neat features around content-aware.
Guest post by Linda I’Anson. Linda’s avid photography interests include street photography, landscapes and travel photography.
My Yosemite Visit
Every time I’m in the Fresno area I make Yosemite a mandatory stop before going home. I used to hate this place. I thought it was overrated and was so sick of hearing about Ansel Adams this Ansel Adams that.
Coming to Yosemite in the winter changed my mind. Freshly fallen snow on the trees and mountains is breathtakingly beautiful. The crowds are gone and the wildlife are plentiful, even near the roads.
Yosemite is a two hour drive east from Fresno. You take Route 41 for the first hour to the park entrance. Then another hour to get to the meat and potatoes of the park. When you come out from the park’s tunnel you are struck in the face with the most grand awesome landscape in the world.
I have been coming to Yosemite 4-5 times a year now. Typically, the two parking lots for Tunnel View are full. This last weekend there were about 3 cars in the parking lot. And when I left the Park, zero! Unfortunately, this winter has been particularly warm and dry. I was hoping to get a shot of tufts of grass in the snow and the the stream iced over.
The easiest thing to do is park the car along the north or south roads, walk off into the woods, and you will find heaps of photographic opportunities. Every time I go, I find something new. I won’t go hiking in the mountains unless my husband joins me (to carry all my gear).
I barely made it for sunset at Valley View. When I arrived, a Japanese photography workshop was there. Thankfully, they didn’t go to my favorite tripod spot, to the right, at the base of a fallen tree trunk. But quite a few in the group were smoking and I had to yell at them in my best Japanese. SMOKING IN YOSEMITE???? Anyway, the sunset was brilliant. The sun hit the face of El Capitan in a gorgeous orange glow. Another photographer showed up afterwards and I told him he missed out on the most glorious sunset. I then showed him what I shot. Lesson learned the hard way, show up on time! My husband is laughing at me right now, as he reads this because I’m not a morning person and hate waking up for sunrise shots. He is always chastising me for not being a “true” photographer and calls me the “lazy faux-tographer”. Continue Reading »
Since I’m a Nikon shooter and I currently use the D700, I’m excited to see the next generation announced by Nikon. Some of the new features I’m motivated about included in the D800 are the 36.3MP FX-format CMOS sensor, Full HD 1080p video at 30p and the built in HDR feature. The price is less than I was expecting too, $2,999. One thing I am concerned about is the number of pixels they are jamming into the sensor and the effect if will have on the output. This will definitely be on the top of my list as my next purchase, but I want to wait and see some of the real world photos with all those pixels before I take the leap.
Looks like just over a month for the release.
Here are some highlights from the Nikon press release for the D800.
Price and Availability
The Nikon D800 will be available in late March for the suggested retail price of $2999.95.* The D800E version will be available in mid April 2012 for a suggested retail price of $3,299.95.* For more information about these models, NIKKOR lenses and other D-SLR cameras please visit http://www.nikonusa.com.
Update 10/12/2012
As I’ve indicated in another post, I’m still contemplating buying the D800. In the meantime to tide me over, I purchased a Fuji X100. 🙂 What a great camera and I just love the retro rangefinder look. Watch for my first take on the X100 soon. Anyway, my daughter’s boyfriend purchased the D800 and really likes the camera. He primarily uses it for portraits and will be doing some wedding shoots. The shots I’ve seen have turned out great and the resolution is nice though the files are huge.
Let me know if any of you have tried the D800 and your thoughts. I’d also like to hear from folks that have both the D4 and D800.
