Your title time: Moving In or Out of the Darkness or Light

Good point Janis.

I recall this being mentioned to Brian during a previous thread that raised reasons for the slight differences between camera histogram and the downloaded image histogram.

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Originally Posted by JBW

Grumpy we are working on he same theory. The Histogram looks funny which means something is not right.

But many people think this is a good shot. Does this mean that for this type of shot this type of histogram is good?

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Brian - I thing this is a good shot, but I also think that you are not getting the entire colour range that your camera has captured out of the image. There are a lot of dark areas surrounding the flower, so this makes sense. On the other hand, I the colour range seems much more constrained that I would expect to see and the image looks a lot more muddy than is warranted. This typically suggests that a change in your PP technique could bring that out, without sacrificing the dark and moody look you like.

Brian,

Can you post the straight out of camera image? That will give us a clue as to what you have done in PP.

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Originally Posted by purplehaze

Speaking to the issue of your seeing the histogram change on import into the computer, Brian, I wanted to make a couple of points:

a) as I understand it, and I trust someone will correct me if I'm wrong, the histogram on the back of the camera represents the jpg that the camera creates for playback purposes, whereas the histogram you see on import into Capture One represents the raw file. That's one potential source of a difference right there.

b) any difference between those two histograms is liable to be enhanced if you have chosen any in-camera processing settings other than neutral.

c) the in-camera conversion is Sony's, the raw conversion is Capture One's. I gather that Capture One works closely with Sony, and is no doubt privy to a certain amount of proprietary information, but it appears to me that their interpretation of Sony's raw files is their own.

d) Capture One has tailored its raw conversion to each of Sony's cameras, so you need to be sure that you have chosen the ICC profile for your camera model under Base Characteristics. If you have selected some other ICC profile, it seems to me that might result in your seeing a different histogram on the computer

Sincerely hope I am not misleading you on any of this, but if so, perhaps we will both be schooled.

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Janis - I do use the full-blown version of Capture One (not the version that Sony ships with its cameras) and so far as I can tell, the histogram that is displayed is based on the image we see on screen. The raw data is just that and is meaningless until it is assembled into an image by the raw converter. I do know that Capture One has to generate thumbnails as part of the import process and strongly suspect that these are jpegs and these are reflected in the histograms.

The raw converter is definitely different than the Adobe engine (and in fact I find that I generally like the output better; as it seems somehow richer and more subtle).

Just remember it does not matter in the slightest what the histogram looks like if you have the photo as you want....:)

However histograms certainly assist in achieving the desired result or giving a clue as to what is wrong.

Hi Brian .I really like your first image. It is a bit on the warm side but it is a beautiful image :) For the histograms I completely agree with Paul.

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Originally Posted by bnnrcn

Hi Brian .I really like your first image. It is a bit on the warm side but it is a beautiful image :) For the histograms I completely agree with Paul.

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I am coming to the same conclusion. For my style(?) of shooting histograms are an aid rather than a Sacred text.

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Originally Posted by JBW

I am coming to the same conclusion. For my style(?) of shooting histograms are an aid rather than a Sacred text.

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Histograms are always an aid and never a sacred text, but they can identify issues with the image. What happens at the extreme left and extreme right sides of the histogram are important; the stuff in the middle, not so much.

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Originally Posted by JBW

I am coming to the same conclusion. For my style(?) of shooting histograms are an aid rather than a Sacred text.

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Histograms are always an aid and never a sacred text, but they can identify issues with the image. What happens at the extreme left and extreme right sides of the histogram are important; the stuff in the middle, not so much.

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Originally Posted by purplehaze

Speaking to the issue of your seeing the histogram change on import into the computer, Brian, I wanted to make a couple of points:

a) as I understand it, and I trust someone will correct me if I'm wrong, the histogram on the back of the camera represents the jpg that the camera creates for playback purposes, whereas the histogram you see on import into Capture One represents the raw file. That's one potential source of a difference right there.

b) any difference between those two histograms is liable to be enhanced if you have chosen any in-camera processing settings other than neutral.

c) the in-camera conversion is Sony's, the raw conversion is Capture One's. I gather that Capture One works closely with Sony, and is no doubt privy to a certain amount of proprietary information, but it appears to me that their interpretation of Sony's raw files is their own.

d) Capture One has tailored its raw conversion to each of Sony's cameras, so you need to be sure that you have chosen the ICC profile for your camera model under Base Characteristics. If you have selected some other ICC profile, it seems to me that might result in your seeing a different histogram on the computer

Sincerely hope I am not misleading you on any of this, but if so, perhaps we will both be schooled.

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A) is 100% correct. People often say 'I never shoot jpeg, my camera is set to raw only' this may be true, but every camera also embeds a jpeg in its raw, or else they'd be nothing to show a histogram against nor anything to preview when chimping. Because the histogram is jpeg derived anything that effects jpegs, affects the histogram, this can (and does) include things like DR expansion settings, jpeg colour profiles etc

B) yes, see my answer above

C) any raw file is effectively just binary, eg 1s and 0s any software that can read the data will interpret it based on its own parameters

D) with capture one, as well the ICC profile for your camera, there are choices of 4 (irrc?) preset tone curves from the drop down just beneath the ICC box, on my Fujis C1 defaults to auto, on my Lumix is the default appears to be 'film standard' these will also effect the histogram in the PP SW, and IMHO automation is not necessarily your friend here....

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A more general comment:

The histogram exists to display a graphical representation of the spread of light. It's a handy tool! We can get a great image from a poor histogram, for example a shot of my daughter, looking at my iPad in bed, spot metered, might make a lovely shot (might!) but the histogram would tell me that (say) 80% of the image is too dark and about 5% of it is blown out. But I don't care, because her face is properly exposed, which is the shot.