Canon EOS 6D: From Snapshots to Great Shots

Using Your Histogram

Simply put, histograms are two-dimensional representations of your images in graph form. There are two different histograms that you should be concerned with: luminance and color. Luminance is referred to in your manual as “brightness” and is most valuable when evaluating your exposures. In Figure 10.2, you see what looks like a mountain range. The graph represents the entire tonal range that your camera can capture, from the whitest whites to the blackest blacks. The left side represents black, and the right side represents white. The heights of the peak represent the number of pixels that contain those luminance levels (a tall peak in the middle means your image contains a large number of medium-bright pixels). When you ...