Histogram

For this exercise I needed to find and shoot the three most basic categories of scene by contrast i.e low, average and high contrast. 



Low contrast



P476: F6.3 @ 1/25  ISO 200  55mm



Histogram 476

Interestingly, the historgram ( 476 ) depicted on my camera display showed a lower contrast image than the above taken from Photoshop Elements i.e. the histogram was concentrated in a smaller area. This histogram shows no clipping.

P477:  F7.1 @ 1/25  ISO 200  55mm





Histogram 477

Again no clipping in Histogram 477. Increasing the f stop to 7.1 makes no demonstrable  difference.

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P478: F8  @ 1/15  ISO 200  55mm

Histogram 478

Again no clipping either side of the histogram but a slight change at the top of the 'peak' and between the colours comparing the Fstop 8 and Fstop 7.1

Average contrast

P479: F5.6 @ 1/1250  ISO 200  28mm

Histogram  479

In this histogram, we can see a more evenly spread out histogram. Although no clipping there is a peak towards the white side suggesting some over exposure.

P480: F4.5 @ 1/2000  ISO 200  22mm

Histogram 480

Lowering the F stop to 4.5 produces a similar histogram...no obvious change.

P481: F6.3 @ 1/800  ISO 200  22mm

Histogram 481

Raising the Fstop to 6.3 moves the histogram over to the left and slightly more over to the right  though the overall spread/ pattern remains the same.

High contrast

P482: f6.3 @ 1/5  ISO 400 12mm

Histogram 482

Some slight clipping on the white side of the histogram.



P483: f7.1 @ 1/4  ISO 400 12mm

Histogram 483

 

 



Here with a smaller aperture than the previous image.there is increased clipping on  the right  and now on the left.

P484: f5.6 @ 1/6  ISO 400  12mm

Histogram  484

A further increase in highlight clipping can be seen on the left of Histogram 484 where the lowest F stop of F5.6 has been used. More light  produces clipping at the white side but seems to removed the clipping on the dark side of the histogram.



This was more of a challenge than I expected given that the camera I was using only provided the histogram after the image had been taken. I found it difficult to judge a scene beoforehand as to whether the image would likely come out as low, average or high contrast. With hindsight the images chosen for this exercise while the best I could find after a number of 'goes' are not really sufficiently clear enough to demonstrate the difference between the three types of contrast and the impact on the contrast of using different F stops.