Check the Exposure Using The Histogram

Summer day time light is usually very bright and it makes it very difficult for the photographers to check the exposure just by looking and the back of the camera. The Histogram is the best tool for those bright sunny days.

In this article I am going to cover why photographers should understand the histogram in photography as well as in photo editing.

What is the Histogram

Understanding the role of the Histogram in digital photography is a must as it can help you in creating the perfect exposure. Due to its significance, I dedicate a good part of our Digital Camera Boot Camp Workshop to about the teach Histogram and if a perfect Histogram exists! Generally speaking the Histogram shows you the tonality of light captured in an image. Please refer to Perfect Histogram 1 and Perfect Histogram 2 for more details.

I took these three pictures using bracketing. the first one is the correct exposure , the second one is one stop underexposed and the third one is one stop overexposed. Although you can clearly see the differences in these photos, it was next to impossible to see it under the bright sunny day on the cameras monitor!

When I was out at the park and looked at camera’s monitor, all three photos looked almost the same. Then I activated the Histogram and only then, I was able to see which photo was exposed correctly.

Here are the same images with their histograms: