[Beginners] Obtaining "RAW" histogram on Canon EOS

[lostinasia]

Hi everybody,

I read somewhere that when the camera visualizes the photo histogram, showing the exposure of the image, it usually refers to the jpeg processed data, even when shooting in RAW.

Therefore I was wondering whether anybody can recommend how to set the camera to obtain an acceptable histogram that approximates the RAW exposure on Canon EOS.

Thank you in advance

[Elmo]

Raw does not contain a picture as such, it contains "raw" data from sensor. ie the number of bits in the bucket. the data needs to be converted to a photograph before a histogram can be determined and the quickest conversion is to JPEG.

[Samanax]

Just What is a RAW File Anyway?

[i speak in math]

as you can tell from reading the above, the raw "image" is just the raw sensor data that does not contain any processing that a jpeg gets, like contrast, saturation, sharpening...etc. So, to simulate that, you can edit how you camera processes jpegs in the picture mode menu. Turn the saturation 1 notch below middle, turn the contrast all the way down. Sharpening doesn't affect the histogram, so that can stay wherever. One more important thing you might want to try is to use a UniWB. You can google the steps to creating a UniWB setting. This basically creates a jpeg that has the same WB as the raw data, thus allowing the histogram to be quite accurate.