Superb detailed explanation here on the blog regarding calibrating your Camera with your Monitor. I shall now only use the histogram as a rough guide to exposure and rely more on the actual image displayed!

Great site!

David

The only shutter I ever had fail was on a 1D Mark 2 (at 27000 actuations)

Our 5Ds (Mk1 and Mk2) have done three wedding and portrait seasons and have never missed a beat. I agree with Damien – the 5D2 is the perfect wedding camera (for a canon user).

I have a 1DS2 and it’s too damned heavy to carry around all day (I hate straps and never use them)

Martin

5D mk2 cameras are far more reliable than the 1Ds series in my experience. Error 99s never seem to happen to 5D mk2s whereas, of the 100s of delegates I get on my workshops each year. I have exclusively shot digital since 2001 and in 9 years I have never had a card fail beyond the point that I couldn’t retrieve all the shots bar 2 And I knew which pictures they were because they were the ones being written to the card from the buffer when the battery died. Having 2 cards would not protect from this. If it ain’t broke and all that. If I had 2 slots for CF cards I would still only use one card at a time. I’d probably get confused about which one is which knowing me.

The 5D mk2 camera is by far the best camera for shooting weddings or portraits. The smaller the better. Perhaps a digital Leica might be preferable for some reportage shooters. The 5D MK2 is light, robust and supremely capable. The files are clean and high enough resolution too.

I hope this helps explain my decisions.

Regards, Damien.

My original concern simply came because I’ve worked in a minilab for years. A large number of pro photographers were disappointed with prints because they trusted the screen too much. So thanks for the clarification. I never doubted your technique.

Your explanation gives context to your advice.

Thanks again.
Dave

I understand your concerns, we all have our own ways of doing things and I would say that if you have a system that works then stick with it. I am very happy to asses exposure on the camera screen once it is set up in the way I describe as in my opinion there is no finer way of doing it.

As we can zoom in to the picture at 100% and see exactly the shadow detail and what info there is and we can do the same with the highlights too I think the picture is the safest way of getting the exposure spot on. I always keep the black flashing highlight option turned off too as a large part of my compositions often include pure white and it is annoying to have the camera telling me I’ve made a mistake or fooling me into cutting the exposure back.

On very high contrast scenes I pop the camera under my coat to check the screen. I never expose for the highlights unless it’s a wedding dress. I expose to get the mid tones and shadow right. If the highlights are too gone with the exposure set for the blacks I reduce contrast by adding light. A characteristic of exposing for the shadows is that the blacks are free from noise and the midtones are in the sweet spot of the tone curve. Playing safe with the highlights usually means boosting the image in Photoshop and lifting the noise to the point it becomes intrusive.

A lot of my frames are low key too and there is no white or near white in the frame either. This is a situation that requires even more careful placement of the shadow detail.

I hope this helps.

Yes, use it as a guide. It’s a useful tool, especially indoors, in controlled lighting, such as in most studios, but switch the lights out and it’ll seem (to human eye) to be brighter, or outside in bright sunlight and it’ll appear too dark. However, blinkies (flashing areas showing overexposure) work in all light conditions.
Regards

Best wishes,

John

The histogram is not a very useful tool to asses exposure but it is brilliant at the post production stage.

Kind regards, Damien.

Good advice.

When shooting in RAW, is the histogram shown on the camera’s LCD based on the RAW file or the camera processed jpg? Does this depend on the make/ model of camera?

Thanks,

John