Histogram Vs. Light metre

[B4Melly]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

 

[John Crowe]

As long as I have a good view of my rear lcd without direct sun on it I am able to simply work off the image itself. In my opinion DSLRs put lightmeters out of business. I used to bracket but my first impressions were always right, so I stopped. Just like good ol' E6, I'd rather underexpose than overexpose.

Just last week I was experimenting at sunrise with a new lens and I accidently overexposed by more than 1 stop...they went into the recycle bin after I could not save them.

 

[DenWil]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

99 days out of 100 I do not use live view nor histogram. I do not bracket. I decide on an exposure for the existing light and then shoot. The highlights are perfect and Zones 0/1/2 fall where they fall. The shadows are not the content, they frame the content.

 

[sybersitizen]

... I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

That sounds like a huge discrepancy. Post an example so we can see.

... do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

If I look for a histogram, I look for one that represents the result I want. That might not be a balanced histogram at all. It might be heavily weighted right or left.

 

[Mark S Abeln]

A light meter only aims at placing a midtone, and it tells you nothing about highlights and shadows. Also, the meter makes assumptions, such as the average reflectivity of objects in the scene.

Matrix mode metering is highly problematic because nobody knows (outside of the manufacturers) how it works. It’s trying to help, but it will vary the exposure, sometimes greatly, from what a bare meter would tell you.

 

[Supisiche]

A light meter only aims at placing a midtone, and it tells you nothing about highlights and shadows. Also, the meter makes assumptions, such as the average reflectivity of objects in the scene.

Matrix mode metering is highly problematic because nobody knows (outside of the manufacturers) how it works. It’s trying to help, but it will vary the exposure, sometimes greatly, from what a bare meter would tell you.

I think this is good info:

matrix

 

[JustUs7]

Use the histogram. As previously mentioned, the light meter is exposing middle gray. The histogram, if you are way off to the left or right, will tell you if you’re under exposed or over exposed. Hard up against the right with a peak going straight up, you likely blew out highlights. Hard against the left with a peak going straight up, you likely clipped shadows.



I use exposure compensation to bias the light meter for proper exposure quite often. Shooting in snow, for example, I’ll bias one or more stops to the right to properly expose white snow. In a dark setting, I’ll bias one or more stops to the left to properly represent a darker room as I see it.

 

[Gerry Winterbourne]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on.

As already noted, the meter works on the basis of average lighting conditions and scene reflectance. Few things are average - would you buy clothes that fit an average person or do you get them to fit your own size?

The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows.

The histogram shows the scene-specific result. It is just about always more reliable than the meter.

I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

That looks wrong: for a scene that is pure white the meter will be either 3 stops or 2.1/2 stops out (depending on whether it is tuned to 12% or 18% reflectance). 4 stops isn't possible, which suggests you are reading the histogram wrong. Really contrasty light can give 2 stops error but it's usually more like 1 stop or less.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter — calling it good

No. I use the meter as a starting point, view the histogram and use exposure compensation to adjust exposure as necessary.

and then post processing?

No. The purpose of processing is to tune the details of colour and tonality, not to correct things we should get right to start with.

Or do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

There is no virtue in a balanced histogram - perhaps this is where you are going wrong. The histogram is only balanced when the tonality of the scene is balanced, and that is relatively rare. What matters isn't balance; it's the ends - with more emphasis on the bright, right-hand end.

 

[CameraCarl]

I use the matrix metering in my camera to make a first exposure. I review that exposure on the histogram. I then make adjustments. I tend to overexpose as much as I can without overexposing any of the three color channels, then make any corrections in post processing. There are lots of articles/videos about "expose to the right" on the internet. Read some of them for both scientific and practical explanations about the advantages of ETTR. To work more quickly, I have set my camera to indicate "blinkies" which flash to show overexposure. I try to avoid too many blinkies on my images.

 

[nicodimus22]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

If you're shooting RAW, it's much easier to recover shadow detail in post than it is to recover blown out highlights. Clipping into the shadows is no big deal. Blowing out your highlights very far is bad news.

Knowing that, I expose so that the highlights aren't blown out, and adjust shadows as needed in post.

--
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[JustUs7]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

If you're shooting RAW, it's much easier to recover shadow detail in post than it is to recover blown out highlights. Clipping into the shadows is no big deal. Blowing out your highlights very far is bad news.

Knowing that, I expose so that the highlights aren't blown out, and adjust shadows as needed in post.

 

[nicodimus22]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

If you're shooting RAW, it's much easier to recover shadow detail in post than it is to recover blown out highlights. Clipping into the shadows is no big deal. Blowing out your highlights very far is bad news.

Knowing that, I expose so that the highlights aren't blown out, and adjust shadows as needed in post.

Depends on the sensor a bit, no? I find highlights generally far more retrievable without revealing image noise whereas if I try to lift shadows too much noise levels indicate under-exposure.

I think that’s kind of the idea behind ETTR, isn’t it?

True, but I'm not talking about noise. I'm talking about being able to bring blown highlights back to the point where none of the areas are clipped. If they are slightly overexposed, you can generally bring them back to something other than pure white. Much more than that, and you either have to live with the photo as-is with some blown out areas (and sometimes weird colors by trying to recover a severely blown area) or delete the photo entirely.

Shadow recovery is much more manageable. Even if you underexpose 3-4 stops, it's pretty salvageable by comparison, even on small sensors. Yes, major underexposure will lead to some noise, but modern software (DXO Photolab specifically) is pretty darned good with noise reduction and can help with that.

--
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http://www.etsy.com/shop/NatureCratePhoto
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TarantulaFocused

 

[SrMi]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

If you're shooting RAW, it's much easier to recover shadow detail in post than it is to recover blown out highlights. Clipping into the shadows is no big deal. Blowing out your highlights very far is bad news.

Knowing that, I expose so that the highlights aren't blown out, and adjust shadows as needed in post.

Depends on the sensor a bit, no? I find highlights generally far more retrievable without revealing image noise whereas if I try to lift shadows too much noise levels indicate under-exposure.

I think that’s kind of the idea behind ETTR, isn’t it?

A blown highlight is not recoverable. What you may experience is that one channel is blown and the post-processing software computes the missing information using the other channels that have not been blown. This can lead to false colors.

The most important step in ETTR is not to blow relevant highlights.

 

[bjn70]

Light meters are a guess, they aren't perfect in every situation. If the histogram shows you are underexposing then add some exposure compensation.

I can also say that I have tested a lot of lens and camera body combinations and some combinations would underexpose while some would overexpose, so there is always the possibility that your combination needs a little exposure compensation for all situations.

 

[ggbutcher]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

For one thing, shadows really don't clip like highlights at the other end, they just compress above zero. With a camera like the Z 6, you can pull most shadows out of the well quite nicely.

With that, I use the highlight-weighted matrix mode almost exclusively, and then I mess with the tone curve in post. Not strict ETTR, but it keeps all but bright in-scene light sources from blowing. And the DR of the Z 6 makes even aggressive log-shaped curves to pull up the shadows do-able.

I'm also experimenting with the two-shot HDR mode. I use the mode where the two NEFs are retained, and I combine them with HDRMerge at home. I have this mode with the other relevant settings in my U1 preset.

Thing is, these techniques are next to impossible to use with JPEGs. The 8-bit values don't react well to the aggressive tone curves. Shooting raw with this approach is a must.

 

[dp20210116]

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

you can either spot meter and dial EC ( for example read = https://www.rawdigger.com/howtouse/calibrate-exposure-meter-to-improve-dynamic-range

Loading…

www.rawdigger.com

to understand how to find out how your camera spot meters ) __or__ switch to UniWB + tuned OOC JPG setting that will let zebra/blinkies (whatever Nikons have) to show clipping in raw in the frame in EVF/LCD ....

 

[Sue Anne Rush]

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

If you're shooting RAW, it's much easier to recover shadow detail in post than it is to recover blown out highlights. Clipping into the shadows is no big deal. Blowing out your highlights very far is bad news.

Knowing that, I expose so that the highlights aren't blown out, and adjust shadows as needed in post.

Yes, shoot in RAW/JPEG and I enjoyed reading your blogs, Etsy, etc...

It's all about light.

 

[Quarkcharmed]

In what genre do you shoot?

Do you shoot raw or jpeg?

I'm having an exposure conundrum. I use a Z6 and am mainly shooting in matrix metering. Quite often I feel like I'm underexposing shots when the light meter says I'm bang on. The histogram says my shots are clipping into the shadows. I find myself relying more on my eye to expose the shot instead of the meter. I sometimes just expose in live view off the histogram, which the meter says is a 3 or four stops overexposed.

How are you guys exposing? Are you relying purely on the meter—calling it good—and then post processing? Or do do you look for a balanced histogram in live view?

 

[rurikw]

I'm not even sure what metering mode I'm in, either matrix or center weighted. If my camera had live zebra or blinkies I'd go by that and maybe glance at the histogram once in a while. Why ETTR only 'mostly'? Sometimes I want to deliver usable jpegs fast and have no time for tweaking. But 95% of the time it's ETTR. My EC range is 90% about -1/3 to +2. With some light at the end of the tunnel type photos I go as low as -2. Can't imagine what would need +3-4.

 

[a_c_skinner]

Yes. Use the histogram to avoid clipping the highlights. Adjust the final density (at least) in processing. If in doubt tend towards underexposure as blown highlights are usually much more objectionable than blocked up shadows.

I still cannot see the advantage of a light meter over a test shot and looking at the histograms. If you've time for one you've time for the other and the histogram tells you what you are actually recording.

People point out meters can be useful for balancing studio lighting, which is plausible and something I don't do or need to do.