Histograms and light meters

By zeb | Published December 30, 2008

Fellow Idaho Strobist, friend and now blogger, David Madsen just posted a great article about light meters. Most people with DSLRs these days don’t think they need a light meter. And while you can live without one, you must realize that your histogram isn’t telling you what you may think it is. To properly represent an object you need to expose for the light hitting the object not the light reflecting off of the object. Histograms are great tools which most of us use constantly and properly interpreted can help you set your exposure, but it’s still telling you what light is hitting your camera and not what light is hitting your object…. unless your object is “neutral grey” (be it the 18% grey or 12% grey depending which camera engineer you believe). he’s got great examples to show you exactly what your camera will tell you and why you need to understand what your histogram is telling you.

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3 Comments

  1. Posted January 4, 2009 at 4:04 pm by David | Permalink

    Thanks for the plug. I have been enjoying reading your blog. I am finding blogging to be somewhat addictive.

    Dave

  2. Posted January 22, 2009 at 5:13 pm by David | Permalink

    The post has changed but the link still works. I rebuilt my database to update to a newer version and when I went to restore the database info I got error messages. I have been spending much of the last 24 hours rebuilding the site from memory. Some of the posts are getting re-written, some will not be back. Lots of work ahead.

    • Posted January 23, 2009 at 12:09 am by zeb | Permalink

      I’ll shoot you a email.