RGB Histograms and Blinking Highlights

<p>While out photographing with my new D7000 last week I realised it has a feature missing, I believe, from most of the comsumer models (I believe it is present in the D300 and no doubt others). I was taking a picture of a back-lit landscape and suspected that the blue channel was probably blowing out. As usual the RGB histogram looked OK but the blue histogram showed signs of clipping though it was hard to see in the bright ambient light; my eyesight is not as good as it was and the histogram is pretty small. Then I realised that the blinking highlight diaplay can be switched from RGB to red, to green and to blue. When set to blue the clipped blue channel showed up really clearly in the sky area.<br>

<br /> This feature seems to me to be really useful, unlike the normal RGB blinking highlight display. Bob Atkins describes the problem with purely RGB histograms here:-<br>

<br /> <a href="http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/clipping/clipping.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/clipping/clipping.html</a><br>

<br /> - and incidentally implies that the feature I describe above is probably missing in his Canon EOS 7D!<br /> <br />I then thought of the following question:-<br /> Why isn't there an option to blink the highlights if:- (red channel clips OR green channel clips OR blue channel clips)? Note that this is not the same as RGB which is just a weighted sum of red, green and blue. With that we could see if any of the three channels was blowing out without having to look at each of red, green and blue in turn.</p>

<p>I have a D300 and I'd be really shocked if your D7000 did *not* have that feature. Is it possible that in the 'newness' of the D7000, you did not enable the feature in the camera's setup menu?</p>

<p>Hi Howard,<br>

I was making the point that as far as I know this feature is missing from earlier models that Nikon call consumer including the D90. It's also missing from the newer D5100 and D5200. On the D7000 I'm pretty sure it is there so long as RGB histograms are enabled. In the UK Nikon call the D600, D7100 and below consumer models while the D300s and up are called professional models.</p>

 

Just remember that the camera's histogram and warnings are based on whatever color space, JPEG size and

compression level, and "picture style" you've set the camera for and if you are a NEF shooter will be misleadingly

conservative / alarmist.

<p>Hi Ellis,<br>

I take the point about NEF. I try to get JPEG right in camera but will take a NEF if I suspect there may be trouble with my JPEG.<br>

........and "picture style" you've set the camera for........Yes indeed! I find the so-called "landscape" style almost unusable out of doors; the contrast is just way too high!<br>

Are histograms really affected significantly by JPEG size and compression? That's a surprise.</p>