V1.02
Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
Page 270
dark areas.
• Pixels are mostly in a narrow band in the histogram
. The
image is likely very low in contrast (or it could be
monochromatic, as would be the case of taking a picture
of a gray card).
• Any spike at the right edge means lost highlight detail
.
This is probably the worst thing you can see in a
histogram. The higher the line crawls up the right edge of
the histogram frame, the more blown-out pixels you have
in your image. What makes this bad is that our eyes
immediately go to the brightest area of a photo when we
view it, and all those pixels stacked up at the right edge of
the histogram will eventually print as paper (yuck!).
• Any spike at the left edge means lost shadow detail
. Or it
could simply mean you have some totally black areas in
your shot. Our eyes aren’t bothered as much by dark areas
in a picture (unless, I suppose, that area is your subject).
In general, you’re looking for a moderately wide distribution
of the pixel values, usually with the largest peaks for the
important portions of your scene somewhere in the middle
three-quarters of the range. If you’re working in a scene that
has many bright values (e.g. snow), the largest peaks may be
to the right of the histogram. Likewise, if you’re working in a
