I have found the current histogram to be rather useless with some high
dynamic range and contrast images. Think a moonshot... moon has large
areas of bright, but lots of contrast so not all the brightness is in the
same point on the the histogram. Rather, it's distributed across a few
stops. The large amount of very dark background (black sky) *completely*
swamps the histogram of such a shot with on big spike on the left.
Pentax has been, historically, a company that builds equipment for
photographers.
I expect that any reply you might get will be along the lines of learn
something about photography.
Perhaps, but it also tends to attract technical types (like
myself). I am not an artsy photographer type (don't have the gift), but
more of a technical photographer. As a "digital K1000 lightbox," I use it
as a device for capturing pixels. As such I want to maximize signal/noise
ratio and get the exposure correct. The "sunny-16" rule underexposed the
moonshot by a good two stops with my setup.
What you are proposing amounts to the film technique of shoot and
hope you get it right, then "develop" (on the computer now) to see if you
did. Seems silly to me when it could be done in-camera. Photoshop/Gimp
will let you generate a log historgram... try it sometime. For some
images its indispensable for analysis.
-Cory
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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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