By now, you have stumbled across a feature on your camera that made you want to set down the camera and run away. On the other hand, you became frustrated that instead of viewing your just taken photograph your camera display is showing a graph of incomprehensible data. Have no fear that is just the histogram of information about the shot you just took. To get back to your photo, just use the up or down arrow control and change the display back to the photo.
The histogram is a tool that tells you about the exposure of your images. The histogram is a bar graph showing dark pixels on the left and white pixels on the right. The height of the bars is a count of pixels in each segment of the color range. More pixels on the left of the graph means there are more dark pixels in the photo, while more pixels on the right indicate a lighter photo. There is no perfect histogram, but a properly exposed photo will have a distribution of bars across the whole range of the graph. Easy, huh?
Still confused? Learn more with Ken Rockwell's excellent, visually oriented description.
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