Tutorial: reading your histogram

I know, we've talked about exposure before. And we'll probably talk about it heaps more in future posts. All because good exposure is one of the keys to great pictures. This post is about reading your histogram and getting useful info on the exposure of your picture. 

There are three main keys to good exposure, namely shutterspeed, aperture and ISO. 

So how can you tell if your exposure is good?
On the back of your camera, you can see the histogram of each photo. And, after importing your pictures into Lightroom, you can see the histogram: 

But what is a histogram actually? A histogram is the graphical representation of the pixels exposed in your picture. So the histogram can be a very useful tool to check the exposure of a picture. The left side of the histogram gives information about the blacks and shadows. The right side of the histogram gives information about the highlights and whites (bright areas of your picture). The middle is for the midtones (18% grey)

So now you know what a histogram is, but how do you use it? 
A well exposed picture has pixels that go from edge to edge. When the peak is on the left the image is actually under-exposed and when the the peak is on the right the image is over-exposed. 

Then again, like with many rules and theories in photography: there are no rights and wrongs here. So it's not wrong to have more pixels on the right or the left side. For example: when shooting a dark subject, your pixels are more on the left side (shadows and blacks). For a high key picture you want a histogram with more pixels on the right side (highlights and whites). So the outlook of your histogram depends on your subject/scene and your goal.

The histogram is quite a useful tool to help you as a photographer. So it's handy to know how it works. But most important is that you achieve what you want with the picture and don't try to shoot a perfect histogram. Use the histogram as a tool for you creativity.

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