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Old 2013-10-07, 11:05pm
Mike Jordan Mike Jordan is offline
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Join Date: Mar 18, 2008
Location: Hillsboro, OR
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If you know how to use it, the histogram is beneficial and will let you get your exposure as close as using a flash meter. This is a whole lot faster than taking a picture, downloading it to your computer, looking at it and then going back to take another shot. The pre-view screen is good for telling crop, looking for blown out highlights or hot spots and if you zoom in, focus. Learning to use the histogram is not hard at all and in this type of photography, you want the graph to be centered or slightly to the left. The peaks can be ignored, it's the ends that are important. The wider spread they are, the more tonal range you have. If the graph is way to the left with lots of space on the right, the image is underexposed so open up the shutter or increase ISO. If it's way to the right with space on the left, it's over exposed so stop down the shutter or decrease the ISO. Do one or the other one click at a time until it's centered. If it's smashed way over one way or the other do two clicks until it's moved out to the middle. Like like putting my histogram just left of center because slightly under exposed brings out the colors better, but different people like different looks.

Mike
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