Getting a decent histogram on my D800

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I've been shooting with a D800 for a couple of months, and, whilst I love it, I'm finding it trickier to get decent metering than when I shot with a D300.

I'm shooting in Raw, and exposing to the right, but, to do this I need a half-decent RGB histogram on my camera monitor, and I think this is where my problem lies.

When I shot with a D300, I created a completely flat custom Picture Control using the Nikon utility. So, when I got the D800, I naturally did the same thing again. Unfortunately, the camera now seems to think that I'm underexposing a lot of the time, but when I load up my photos, the software seems to be showing a brighter image.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what to use for a Picture Control to get a decent histogram for Raw ETTR?
 
I just use mine as it is. I get beautiful exposures every time. Why do you need to create a custom anything? Just expose to the right as it is.
 
Pookeyhead said:
I just use mine as it is. I get beautiful exposures every time. Why do you need to create a custom anything? Just expose to the right as it is.
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Well, the histogram on the back of the camera is just the histogram of whatever Nikon's current Picture Control produces. Change the Picture Control and the histogram changes too. I find that blown highlights are often misrepresented using the standard Picture Controls, which is why I've been using a custom one.

I found this with the standard Control on the D800, but the custom Control I made is just as bad, and makes it look like I'm underexposing, so I might as well go back to the Standard or Neutral Control.

I just wondered if anyone had experimented with these and found a better setting.
 
There is that too. If you really need to nail exposure for a particularly fussy job... use an incident reading. I use a little Sekonic L308, and I've always used it for nearly 15 years now and it's never let me down once.

One other thing is.. do you really need to ETTR that much? I find a lot of people do this, even if the dynamic range is already filling the histogram... or even if they're not bothered about, or need shadow detail. ETTR is not a way of getting "better" exposure generally... it's merely a way to maximise dynamic range is there is room to allow it, as I'm sure you know.

Also... doesn't picture control only apply to JPEGs? If you are shooting RAW and apply a picture control, yes it will effect the histogram, and the preview on the screen, but it will not be applied to your RAW at time of capture. Unless you use Capture NX2, it won't be applied at all.

If you're shooting RAW though, and not using NX2, then your preview screen image, preview screen histogram, and anything set in Picture Control will be inaccurate unless you set neutral.

My advice would be to use the neutral picture control, as that will most closely match the unmolested RAW output.
 
Yes, I know that picture controls only affect TIFF/JPEG image rendering, but that's the whole point. The histogram and highlights readings on the back of the camera are based on the camera's rendering of the image, not the Raw data (which would be better for me). So, if you change the picture control, you change the histogram/highlights.

I'm not interested in buying a hand-held meter. I've been shooting quite successfully with a humble D300 and a custom picture control for 5 years. I could always tell if my exposures were optimum before, so I'm not quite sure why it's harder now. I tried Neutral, and, whilst the histogram is better, the highlights are still wrong.

I am committed to shooting ETTR most of the time, but to do this, I need to be fairly certain I have not overexposed AND, at the same time, not underexposed by too much. I do make a lot of use of my cameras' dynamic ranges, so this is quite important to me.

Let me give an example: yesterday I took a photo of a bunch of wild daffodils whilst out on a walk. Using my custom picture control, the preview looked a bit underexposed, if anything, and there were no blinkies. When I got it home, some of the yellows were blown and needed a full stop of recovery, and the photo wasn't actually underexposed by much, if at all.

I tried reprocessing the image in-camera, using the "NEF (Raw) Processing" tool. I used the custom, Neutral and Standard picture controls. None of the resulting histogram/highlights displays gave an indication of how close to overexposing I was. Neutral was the closest, so that's the one I'm going to use for the time being.

With my D300, I created a custom picture control based on the Neutral profile, but with a completely flat tone curve. It always gave me a pretty good histogram and highlight display. If anything it was a little too conservative, and I'd sometimes get blinkies which were recoverable--so much the better.
 
I've never had such a difference between preview/histogram and actual RAW file with the D800. I'm afraid I've no idea why you are. All I can suggest is carry on tweaking your custom control until you get something satisfactory for you.
 
All cameras are different when you're working to a high degree of accuracy, ie ETTR, and the D800 has a very different sensor and processing engine to a D300. Basically, you just have to experiment, and get to know how much headroom you've got on the histogram/blinkies relative to post processing regime.

I use ETTR a lot, it tends to be my default method even when it's not really necessary (though since it is basically deliberate over-exposure, it can drive your shutter speeds lower than ideal if you don't watch it).

Like Dave, blinkies tend to be my guiding light, and to get those and the histogram as close to the Raw file as possible, I turn the contrast setting down. This one control makes much more difference than any other to the accuracy of the histogram and the point where blinkies flash.

I shoot Canon and use Lightroom, which picks up the in-camera settings and applies Adobe's mimic version as default. Works well for me :thumbs:
 
I must be under utilising my D800, as I don't have a clue what most of this is about.
 
I'm sure I read somewhere fairly recently (within the last year...) that ETTR is not necessarily the best thing to do with some cameras and that better results can be had (with these cameras...) by shooting normally.

I can't remember where I read this so I can't provide a link but as we're talking digital the obvious thing to do is to fire off a load of shots using ETTR or not under different conditions and camera settings and see what looks best.
 
Jayst84 said:
Can you not just meter your highlights and be done with it?
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For ETTR, no, not really. TBH, for this technique I use blinkies more than the histogram though of course the two are very closely related.

With ETTR, the idea is to load the sensor with as much important exposure/data as possible and although the concentration is on the highlights at the time of shooting, the major benefit is seen at the shadow end where maybe a couple of stops extra makes a big difference to noise and tone separation.

In doing so, you will usually let very bright areas blow, eg specular highlights, and make a subjective decision to maybe let some other unimportant areas go too. The tricky bit, and where you need to know your camera well, is which area to leave where blinkies are just showing. Blinkies are a warning that an area is either blown or on the brink of blowing, and I know I have at least half a stop above where my blinkies are flashing, on the Raw file.

ETTR is very subject dependent. A benign subject with no very bright tones can take masses of extra exposure, like three or more stops for a landscape with a lot of dark foliage and no bright sky (or sky that you're happy to let blow) and this kind of subject would also show most benefit. Other subjects can take maybe no more than one stop.
 
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I read an article on why ETTR is supposedly bad, but I didn't really see the logic in the argument, and I'm not sure the "hue twist" problem applies to Adobe software any more since PV 2012 was released with LR4/CR7.

It makes perfect sense to me that with 16,000 levels of brightness in a 14-bit Raw image, you need to be using as many of them as possible if you're going to be doing any degree of post processing which involves high contrast scenes. If you underexpose by only 1 stop, you've already thrown away 8000 levels. 6 stops darker, you drop from 128 levels to 64. What's the point of having all that dynamic range if you pixelate it in post?

Automatic exposure is only as accurate as the camera meter, and meters aren't perfect. Ideally I need a Raw histogram to check my exposure was good, but camera manufacturers don't seem to agree, and give you a JPEG version. The only way to check you're doing it right is to use a computer-based Raw analyser, like Rawnalyze or RawDigger.

Of course, if you don't do any post processing, or shoot high contrast scenes, then you don't need any of this.
 
Since you can't actually see a Raw image, it has to be converted to a visible file of some sort and JPEG just makes most sense overall really.

But I don't find that a problem. As I mentioned above, try turning contrast right down in-camera - it compresses the histogram from both sides and pushes the blinkies point up. Then note where the blinkies are flashing on the LCD, and compare that with what's showing in post processing. I find they're not too different and I can estimate the difference pretty well when shooting.
 
HoppyUK said:
Since you can't actually see a Raw image, it has to be converted to a visible file of some sort and JPEG just makes most sense overall really.

But I don't find that a problem. As I mentioned above, try turning contrast right down in-camera - it compresses the histogram from both sides and pushes the blinkies point up. Then note where the blinkies are flashing on the LCD, and compare that with what's showing in post processing. I find they're not too different and I can estimate the difference pretty well when shooting.
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Sounds good. I'll definitely give that a try.
 
Yammer said:
Sounds good. I'll definitely give that a try.
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I happen to have a Nikon D700 here ATM and just tried it - it makes a difference, but not much LOL. If you're concerned about individual colour channels blowing, try turning down saturation too. Basically, all in-camera pre-sets affect the histogram and that affects blinkies.

But that's not the main point really. The trick is to know how the in-camera blinkies (at given settings) relate to the Raw file in your post processing regime. That's a fixed relationship and if you know it's say 1.3 stops between blinkies just starting to flash on the LCD and actually blowing on the Raw, that's a workable difference to estimate in the field to a reasonable degree of accuracy.
 
Just for anyone who might be looking for this in future...

(smacks forehead) I worked out why the custom profile looked underexposed: I'd forgotten about Adobe's "Baseline Exposure". Basically, Adobe has a Baseline Exposure offset for every camera they handle, and they add this to the default exposure in Camera Raw and Lightroom.

Apparently, the offset for the D800 is 0.35EV, so if you set the default Exposure value to -0.35, the default rendition looks the same brightness as the embedded preview, and the histograms are much closer. It was 0.50EV for the D300, and my default Exposure setting is -0.50.

If you use Lightroom/ACR and want to know how to find out this offset, you need to convert an image to DNG and then use an EXIF viewer (I used EXIFtool) to find the "Baseline Exposure" value.
 
Yammer said:
Let me give an example: yesterday I took a photo of a bunch of wild daffodils whilst out on a walk. Using my custom picture control, the preview looked a bit underexposed, if anything, and there were no blinkies. When I got it home, some of the yellows were blown and needed a full stop of recovery, and the photo wasn't actually underexposed by much, if at all.
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Is the RGB Histogram taken any notice of to look out for individual channels blowing out too much? :shrug: You can sometimes see some of the channels overexposing when the overall Histogram looks fine, particularly the red channel with portraits. Not sure how that would have helped with Yellows. ;)

How overexposing RGB channels relates to ETTR I don't know. :shrug:
 
redhed17 said:
Is the RGB Histogram taken any notice of to look out for individual channels blowing out too much? :shrug: You can sometimes see some of the channels overexposing when the overall Histogram looks fine, particularly the red channel with portraits. Not sure how that would have helped with Yellows. ;)

How overexposing RGB channels relates to ETTR I don't know. :shrug:
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Agree with Yammer - don't worry about it really.

I hardly ever look at the RGB histogram. Even if one channel is blown, other channels won't be, or the regular brightness histogram would show that.

Might have a look if shooting say daffodils in bright sun, when the yellow channel is obviously important and likely to be much brighter than others, and adjust accordingly.
 
Yammer said:
Just for anyone who might be looking for this in future...

(smacks forehead) I worked out why the custom profile looked underexposed: I'd forgotten about Adobe's "Baseline Exposure". Basically, Adobe has a Baseline Exposure offset for every camera they handle, and they add this to the default exposure in Camera Raw and Lightroom.

Apparently, the offset for the D800 is 0.35EV, so if you set the default Exposure value to -0.35, the default rendition looks the same brightness as the embedded preview, and the histograms are much closer. It was 0.50EV for the D300, and my default Exposure setting is -0.50.

If you use Lightroom/ACR and want to know how to find out this offset, you need to convert an image to DNG and then use an EXIF viewer (I used EXIFtool) to find the "Baseline Exposure" value.
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Hi Keith
Very interested in this.......so what custom settings are you using in-camera and is there any settings to alter in CS6 or Lightroom 4?
Thanks
JohnyT
 
Johnytuono said:
so what custom settings are you using in-camera and is there any settings to alter in CS6 or Lightroom 4?
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So far, I'm using a custom picture control in the camera, and I've changed the default exposure setting in Camera Raw to -0.35 (I have ACR defaults specific to camera serial number).

To make the custom picture control, open the Nikon Picture Control Utility, choose Neutral, set custom tone curve, and leave it at flat, set sharpening to zero. Save it as a new control, copy it to your memory card, and load it in the camera menu.
 
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