Jim,
Can you please describe a proper histogram with a picture or two?

From what I'm reading there is no perfect histogram - right?
They say - "Depends on what one wants to accomplish" but that doesn't help me much.

What SHOULD I want to accomplish?

I understand that "dark tones" are left and "light tones" are right.

Does this mean we should want a histogram piled up in the middle and tapering off both on the right AND left?

Also, why am I only able to play my videos with VLC and not Windows Media Player?

You are a great asset to this forum, Jim.

Many thanks for all your help!

Hi,

I am not Jim but I'll give it a try ;)
The histogram shows you how brightness levels of an image are spread from black to white. Ideally you don't have any total black or total white pixels in your image (the Inspire-1 app shows you total white areas with a zebra like pattern overlay). So you are right - try to "pile up" all brightness levels within the histogram. Unfortunately (in case of photography) nature provides a way broader dynamic range from pitch black to bright sunlight than any sensor can capture, so you will not always be able to have the entire scene perfectly exposed.
The histogram is really just a tool that helps you to get the exposure as good as possible.

In general we could say that if the majority of the brightness levels are located towards the left side of the histogram, the image might be underexposed.


If they are towards the right side it might be over exposed.


Unfortunately it's even a little more complicated than that:
You will see that a histogram in photography is typically divided into stops (5 vertical sections in the examples above)
The number of brightness levels each stop represents is not the same - it could be like that (from left to right / dark to bright):

Stop 1: 128 levels
Stop 2: 256 levels
Stop 3: 512 levels
Stop 4: 1024 levels
Stop 5: 2048 levels

This means that if you tend to expose your image so that most tones pile up towards the right side of the histogram (without having all white pixels), you'll end up with a lot more tones to work with in post processing. This is sometimes referred to as "expose to the right" and requires you to fix the overall contrast in post processing.
As said before, this is not always possible and depends on the scene you take a picture of.
With video codecs it's additionally important to expose to the right as many compression algorithms easily cause nasty artifacts in the dark areas of a scene.

Have a read here and here.

Regarding VLC: The Windows Media Player relys on Video and Audio codecs to be provided by the operating system while VLC has most common codecs as part of the program package. In order to play most video codecs with WMP just install a codec pack like this K-Lite.

marco Posted at 2015-3-23 08:05
Hi,

I am not Jim but I'll give it try ;)

Thanks Marco!

You da man Marco!  Great explanation that pretty much says it all!

Experiment with the histogram, take the same shot using a few different exposures (by changing the shutter speed/ISO) and check your results.

Remember that exposing correctly doesn't always mean eliminating all overexposure.  

As Marco points out when shooting outdoors you might encounter massive dynamic range (number of brightness steps between white and black) and your best option might be to let certain areas go over the top into white.  Usually small portions of sky.  

Just pointing out there are times to break every rule.

I'm out of the house at the moment so can't take any pics, but Marco's excellent post should give a strong foundation.

jimhare Posted at 2015-3-23 16:35
You da man Marco!  Great explanation that pretty much says it all!

Experiment with the histogram, t ...

Many thanks to both Marco and Jim! I think I'm starting to "get-it"

The linked resources Marco provided are excellent!

There is also another school of thought.  If you are going to err, err on the side of UNDER exposure.  Too much light 'blows out' the image and you are left with nothing...under exposure (dark) might give you a chance of 'pulling out' an image.

dbeck@promobox. Posted at 2015-3-23 22:45
There is also another school of thought.  If you are going to err, err on the side of UNDER exposure ...

Absolutely right, and the school of thought I subscribe to on bigger cameras.  

The problem with the Inspire is underexposed shots bring out the worst artifacts.  

Unfortunately the only option (in my opinion) is aim for the brightest correct exposure you can and run the risk of getting the odd overexposed shot once in a while.

Can only rely on pulling from the left when shooting RAW.

marco Posted at 2015-3-23 08:05
Hi,

I am not Jim but I'll give it try ;)

Marco, great reply!
Hope you don't mind a small addition on the K-lite requirement for WMP to handle 4K videos.
During K-lite codec pack installation you can prioritize different codec implementations for decoding / encoding a certain file format. Lets say we choose to capture 4K video with I1 in *.mp4 format with H264 compression. When installing K-lite codec pack, choose VAL codec as default for mp4 files and select HW acceleration to be used when decoding and encoding. I have a machine with dual graphic cards, thus I could even select the VAL hardware acceleration to be done by the NVidia card, while the player renders the video on the Intel HD 4000 card. Result: smoothest play in full 4K I could ever get.
If someone is having trouble playing 4K video with WMP or VLC due to a low performance graphics card (old generation machine), I suggest to try KMPlayer. This player comes with internal, very lite codecs which perform faster than most software codecs. Image during playback may look like having an interlaced effect on fast scenes, but at least will play without jittering or the need to downscale the video.
Regards,
Bogdan

I have no problem using Windows media player shooting in NTSC and  MP4, or am I missing something in this thread?