ihpoc Photography Short Series - My Favorite Tips of the Trade #5

Here is tip number five from my favorite photography tips of the trade:

#5 A very important tip has been learning to set the exposure of the photo to the histogram in my camera. While shooting in manual mode I set the screen to show me the histogram information when I shoot a picture. I access it and then lower or up the exposure to help it peak in the middle instead of too far to the right or left. Too far to the right and the picture is too light and the highlights get blown (you never want your highlights blown or you lose detail and have a block of white that doesn’t belong). If it is too dark you will lose a lot of detail. While you can try to fix  the dark one in your editing software, you will often get a lot of noise. If you overexpose and have too many highlights it is often impossible to correct it.

The funny thing about my this tip is that someone actually did mention it to me in the first few months of shooting. He said to pay good attention to the histogram, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. 5 years later its sunk in, lol! Like I said, I have a lot to learn. Here is a link to a site that describes histograms in more detail.

Come back tomorrow for the next tip.