(vocalizing) (upbeat music) - Hi everyone, and welcome to pal2tech. I am so happy to be
back here in the studio. Today, we are talking about the histogram. I love the histogram. It's my all time favorite
photography tool. The histogram is one of those tools that once you wrap your mind around it, it's easy to understand and use. You just need to have one of those, "Oh, that's what it's about" moments. Well, you've come to the right place. A histogram is the little
display graph that appears either on your camera while you're
taking or playing back a photo or it's available later on
in post-production software, such as Lightroom and Capture One. A histogram never tells
you what's right or wrong with your photo. It's simply a tool. One of the many tools in
your photography toolbox that's there to help you make
the best exposure decision that you can based on what you
want to achieve artistically. Now, many photographers use the histogram because they have either one or both of the two big exposure fears. Fear number one is that they
are afraid of overexposing areas in their scene with too much light. This is known as blowing the highlights. And this is a valid fear because once you blow your highlights, you end up with nothing but
white in areas of your image. No sensor data, no image data, nothing. And you go straight to exposure jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Fear number two is the
fear of underexposing areas of your image so much, you lose data, and this is otherwise known
as crushing your blacks. And you also will get sent
to underexposure jail, no $200 for you. There are basically
three types of histograms and they all function in
basically the same manner. The first is a standard
luminosity histogram, and it looks like this. So, to enable the histogram, go into the settings of your camera, located in the wrench
area under screen set-up, and look for DISP custom setting. And go ahead and tick the
box that says histogram. Now you will see your
histogram right here. You see that? And it changes depending
upon your scene, okay? Live, look at that. This histogram has no color
information displayed at all. It's just a gray scale reduction of the exposure range of your image. The second type is called
your RGB histogram, and it will show you four
histograms at the same time, a regular histogram and
a separate histogram for red, green, and blue color channels. Now, most Fujifilm cameras
have this type of histogram that you can enable. Press and hold down the DISP back button. Once you get to this menu, simply assign a custom
button or a swipe gesture to the histogram. In this case, I'm assigning it to the
swipe up gesture histogram. Now, when I swipe up, boom,
there's my RGB histogram. And the third type of histogram you may see is the combined histogram, where you see everything all
at once in the same graph, the red, green, blue,
and luminosity values are all represented together. Now, this type of histogram
is used most often in a post-production workflow. As I mentioned, all of these histograms function
in basically the same way. Looking at the histogram here, if you've never used one before, it often resembles a
silhouette of a few mountains off in the distance. These areas and shapes on the histogram represent the number of pixels in a specific tone in your image. The higher up they go, the more pixels there are
for that specific tone, but what tone or level
of brightness exactly? Well, you generally
need to read a histogram from the left to the right. It starts on the left with
pure black, or 0% brightness. As you move this way
toward the right side, you will see the brighter
tones in your image represented here on the graph. Now, when you finally get
to the furthest right side, if you happen to see pixels there, this means that there are
areas at 100% brightness somewhere in your image. It would be very helpful in
understanding the histogram for you to group segments
of the histogram together. So, for example, starting with the left, this segment shows you if
you have any black areas in your image, then moving
right, the next segment over, we have the shadows. Then we have the mid-tones
and continuing right, we have the highlights,
and finally the whites. And if you're in Lightroom and you hover your mouse
over the histogram, you can even see little hints
as to what each section means. And since there is pixel
information in the whites, that means there's an area in
the shot that's pure white, no image data at all,
just blown white, okay? This area right here, you see that? Look at that. And so, the histogram records
that little bit of the picture that's blinding white on
the right side right here. But look at the histogram over here. There are some areas of pixels
that are all the way over in the black area of the picture, right? And obviously that must be
this area right here, perhaps, or look at this, have a look at this. You see that? And that area right here is represented on the histogram right here. And if you look at the mid-tones, you see how there's a
whole bunch of pixels in the mid-tone areas. Well, obviously, that would be the sky. You see that, a lot of
that is right there. Perhaps some of the water here. Now, anytime you make
adjustments to the image, the histogram is going to change. Look at how this histogram is changing as I'm bringing up the exposure and then bringing it back down. Hold on a second, yeah. Okay. Before we continue, I'd
like to give a big thanks to today's video sponsor, Anker. For those of you that follow the channel, you will know that Anker is a
regular supporter of Pal2Tech and makes awesome products. Let's see what they're cooking up today. This is the new Anker Nano Pro. It's the latest 20-watt small
charger designed for iPhone. It can charge the iPhone 13 series from 0% to 50% in about 26 minutes. That's up to three times
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most people are used to. I am constantly needing
to charge these phones when I'm out shooting 4K B-roll. The Anker Nano Pro has also been upgraded with a temperature sensor
and intelligence software that runs while charging so that it makes the
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in four different colors. I have black ice and glacier blue. I should have actually had Anker send over all four of the colors
to show you for this video. These things are so small and colorful. I was actually thinking, okay, I'll do a bit where I put all four of them in a bowl of cereal, pour milk over them and then eat them up like fruit loops. Anyway, I will have a
link in the description below this video where
you can check them out. Let's get back to the histogram. But where you absolutely
need the histogram the most is at the time you're taking
your photo in the first place. Now, while you're out shooting, you want to make sure that
you check your histogram as one of the last steps in the process after you've framed and
composed and set up your shot, obviously. So let's say this is the
scene I'm shooting right here. Look at my histogram. It's like all the way, either side, right? That's because there's
extremes in this photo. There's very dark areas
and very light areas. And this is why the histogram
is never meant to be used as something that tells you whether you're doing it
either wrong or right, okay? Because in this example, I'm blowing my highlights
and I'm crushing my blacks. However, my subject is the Monopoly board. And if I go ahead and adjust my exposure to fix the histogram, have a look at this. Okay, look at that,
bringing down the exposure. There, I'm not clipping anything, but you can't see the Monopoly board. Okay? Obviously, you need to make
artistic decisions yourself. This just simply guides
you in what you want to do. And it's basically saying,
okay, photographer, just know that if you have your
Monopoly board looking good, you're going to have areas of your image that's going to be completely blown out. Are you okay with that? That's all the histogram's doing, really. Now, something very important. Whenever you're looking
at the live histogram on your Fujifilm camera, you are actually seeing the
representation of the JPEG of your image based on the film
simulation and JPEG settings that you've dialed in. It does not directly reflect the raw file. And because of this, your histogram may be
over-representing any clipping that may be going on. And this is more noticeable if you are using the RGB
histogram for color channels. Let me show you what I mean. So for example, here, the RGB histogram is telling me that my
red channel is clipping. Do you see that? And that's because it's
basing its readings off the settings I have in the
camera, such as Velvia/Vivid. That's the film simulation I'm using. But if I change it to say, I
don't know, Classic Negative, now let's have a look. No more clipping because
I changed the film SIM. However, remember that
if you're shooting raw, you have more latitude. Now, a handy tip. If you want to force the
camera to render your histogram exactly as your sensor will see it, then simply turn on Natural Live View. Go into the menu, under screen
set-up, Natural Live View, turn it on. You could also assign a
shortcut button to that. Now, what your histogram
sees through the viewfinder is exactly what your camera's sensor sees without the film simulation
stepping in the way and changing it. So I'm in Natural Live View here. And if I go up to here, I'm
definitely not clipping. Now, keep in mind that
if you're shooting with Natural Live View on, right,
and you're shooting JPEGs, if you're shooting that way, then yes, your JPEGs will still
have the film simulation baked into them, even with
Natural Live View turned on. It just changes what you see
in the viewfinder, and also, and more importantly,
what the histogram sees. To learn more about how the histogram, particularly the RGB histogram captures JPEG versus raw data, be sure to see my RGB histogram video. Let's discuss exposing to the right. Exposing to the right, for those of you that
don't know what it is, is a common practice where
you look at your histogram and then you make exposure
adjustments to move that graph over as far to the right
as you possibly can get without clipping, or in other words, getting the pixel lines creeping
up the right side like this in your shot. The idea behind this technique is that by exposing to the right, you are saturating your sensor with as much light and detail
as possible from your scene. This has the benefit of giving
you a wider dynamic range and helps to prevent more noise from appearing in the shadows when you try and recover
them in post-production. This is because you generally
will find more noise present in your shadows
than in your highlights. So, exposing to the right is
usually the end goal being, you want to later on raise
your shadows in post-production with as little noise as possible. So, you expose as much as possible, saturate that sensor with
light without clipping. Let me show you an example. Okay, for this scene, have a look. According to my Fujifilm camera, this scene is perfectly exposed. The exposure meter right
here, it's at zero. The histogram looks good. We don't have any blowing of highlights or clipping of shadows. It's perfect. I'm going to go ahead and take the shot. Now, I'm going to try
exposing to the right. So I'm going to bring
more light into the camera by reducing my shutter speed. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead
now and drop my shutter speed and bring more light in. Look, moving the histogram
over to the right. You see that? Just a little bit. I don't want to go too
much and start clipping. Just a little bit over, as
far as I can get to the right without the clipping. And taking the shot. Okay, let's have a look
and see what we got. Okay, the first shot I took
is on the left right here. And the second one on the right. Now for each of these, I'm going to go ahead
and bring up my shadows, as far as I can. I'm cranking the shadows all the way up and look at the difference. The shot on the left was done
without exposing to the right, the shot on the right I
had exposed to the right by about two-thirds of a stop. There's definitely less
noise in the shadows in the image that I exposed to the right when I tried to bring back
the shadows in Lightroom. You can see it here. Now, this is a subtle
difference and I'm at 400% and I have the shadow slider
cranked all the way up as much as I can get. I'm just trying to make a point as to why people expose to the right and use the histogram
to help them do that. The other thing to keep in mind, if you're going to expose to the right is the subject itself. If you're shooting bright,
saturated, or contrast-y colors, such as flowers or a Rubik's cube, then you're going to want
to use your RGB histogram to make sure that the
individual color channel is not clipping. This scene looks fairly good. It's not clipping. However, watch what happens when I switch over to the RGB histogram. Look at that, we've got
clipping in the red channel. You see that right there? So the RGB histogram can
be a huge help for you if you're shooting in highly contrast-y, or perhaps a scene that has
a majority of a single color, and you want to be sure that
that color is not clipping. You can also use the histogram
when you're playing back images on your camera, just
after you've shot them. Now, when you do that, if you're
shooting in raw plus JPEG, then the histogram will
read the full-size JPEG that has been captured by the camera. Well, thank you so much for watching and I hope you found the video helpful. And if you did, be sure to
give it the like and subscribe. Please share your
histogram tips down below. I would love to know how you do it. In the meantime, I'll see
you in another video again very soon. Take care.
