Using your camera's histogram

I check my histogram for any clipped highlights, or shadows, but what else can you tell by looking at the histogram? I'm assuming you can infer dynamic range from it too? If you find that DR is low, how/what can you adjust to push DR? What other things do you use your histogram to tell you, and what do you do to adjust?

The histogram can show if you're having clipping in your blacks or whites. It also shows your overall contrast range. If you see that it just has a hill of values towards the left side, you then know you have more leeway to to expose further to the right. You may want to do that if the hill is all the way to the left: where noise resides.

In practice I usually only use it to verify I'm not clipping on the shadow end. The highlight tone priority tells me what is clipping for highlights.

You could use it to determine if it is a tonally flat image, but simply looking at the image would give you the same info.

ozzmodan wrote in post #17101280
In practice I usually only use it to verify I'm not clipping on the shadow end. The highlight tone priority tells me what is clipping for highlights.

You could use it to determine if it is a tonally flat image, but simply looking at the image would give you the same info.

Tonally flat means what? Lacking in contrast? Saturation? How does the histogram tell you that? A very low/flat graph?

Thanks BTW for the replies!

hiketheplanet wrote in post #17101256
I check my histogram for any clipped highlights, or shadows, but what else can you tell by looking at the histogram? I'm assuming you can infer dynamic range from it too? If you find that DR is low, how/what can you adjust to push DR? What other things do you use your histogram to tell you, and what do you do to adjust?

http://www.cambridgein​colour.com/tutorials/h​istograms1.htm
http://www.cambridgein​colour.com/tutorials/h​istograms2.htm