LCD Display

[bill garofalo]

After shooting I press play to view the image. Image looks fine. BUT, when I go into my Mac, the shot is underexposed. Is there an adjustment for the brightness of the display? ie: I could turn it down a notch to give a truer version of what I am getting.
bill garofalo

[turbo-944]

Bill,

To adjust the brightness press the PLAY button on the back. When an image displays press the MENU button and use the arrows to move all the way to the right hand option. This is the control for LCD Brightness, press the MENU button again to display the brightness scale.

Because the LCD will look different under different lighting conditions, and from different angles, you should always check the histogram for the most acurate analysis of exposure. I normally keep my LCD's set to less than half of the brightness scale, 3 or 4 dots from the left, for indoor use.

Hope this helps,

Dan.:cool:

[bill garofalo]

Thank you for your response. It seems my Historgrams come out peaks on the left quickly to almost zero on the middle and right side. I shoot with bounce flash mostly.
bill garofalo

[turbo-944]

Bill,

Sounds like your flash is maxed out - need more power or use less bounce......

The histogram is a very powerful tool, but interpretation of it can be rather complicated. Even though this is a rather long post, it is a very brief description of the histogram.

Remember one thing about the histogram. The LCD does not show 0 or 255, I don't know why but this seems to be correct(Info from Gary Fong). If there is not a peak on the display that goes to the top, then either 0 or 255 is highest. The way to determine the amount of whichever one is the strongest, ie. at the full height of the display, is to note how high the rest of the levels of the histogram are.

That is to say if the entire histogram is very low, the 0 or the 255 is very high. This meens you are either blowing out a lot of pixels or have a lot of all black pixels. If the histogram levels are quite high, there is not a single level that is over powering the rest of the image.

If it is consistant from side to side, not a lot at minimum or maximum at the edges or in the middle, of the LCD there is much more detail in the gradients of the image. Generally this is a sign of a lower contrast image, which seems to be preferrable with digital. If you need more contrast in your finished image it can be added in post processing, but the details can not be recovered if they are never there.

To get a more acurate depiction of the histogram, use photoshop or another program capable of displaying the entire histogram. They will normally show all values including 0 and 255, so if one of them is the hightst, you will know which is the problem. The other benefit is that you can see the details in the histogram much better on a large monitor vs. the small camera LCD.

Hope this helps,

Dan.

[bill garofalo]

Thank you Dan. It was nice of you to write such a detailed explaination. I will study and follow your recomendations.
BUT! to see the historgram on my Mac G4, ah that is the question. I never knew that was possible. Also i am assuming that the 0 to 255 are the extremes of the historgram, ie: from coal black to snow white.
I did a glamour shoot in a large house in connecticut, last week. www.glamour101.com. Took 500 pictures, (2 Micro drives) 90% came out perfect. In dark room terminology, almost "straight prints"
At home, with a Grey backdrop, low room light I was getting the results I originally spoke of. I will using the SB16 instead of the SB26. The 16 has an auxillary flash in the front to fill shadows.
At 74 I never had so much fun
bill garofalo