Why the histogram is useful
In photography, it all comes back to the lighting. Try taking snapshots (without your flash, naturally) in your local darkroom and let me know how things turn out.
For the record, I didn’t travel far today. No long haul roadtrips to see family members. No pointless visits to a hamfest. Instead, I caught a local bus and went off to a photographers’ trade show, just because it was there. This is a small town for camera enthusiasts, and this was a small scale presentation. Essentially, one of the local retail outlets rented a hall, brought in a few of the manufacturers’ reps and invited those of us with nothing else to do to spend $4 on a ticket to see the same stuff they have at the store, without the constraints of keeping the cash register busy.
My favourite moment of the day was sitting in on a workshop on studio lighting exposures. Under the expert tutelage of the Studio Coach (the guest instructor), we learned that digital photography has to obey the same rules of physics as the film based systems of my past. If you can control your exposure (and keep the model in focus), you have a better than even chance of producing work that won’t shame you in the eyes of others. The model was ready, and so was his set of foldaway targets.
Going back to my flirtation with the Zone system, I’ve understood that measuring exposure, consistently, makes perfect sense. My present camera can show me a histogram of any given situation (referring to lighting, for those who think I’m waxing mathematical). With a standardized target (the hallowed 18% grey card) and some imagination, things work.
Time to reread the manual, and see if I can mesh my newfound information with the tools at hand.
