I am considering upgrading to a Nikon-Z camera. Are there any signs of RAW histogram and Raw-based ETTR being introduced in-camera in the near future, before I put my money down?
I haven't heard anything about that...
If it's for stills (I mean not Video), your best bet to display histograms reflecting more precisely ETTR in Nikon Z cameras may be to play with camera profiles and so you may check this (the guy gives a kind of method to have this in Z cameras) : https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4465007
You can directly download the profile he's using here : https://www.dropbox.com/s/8scia6r8v99o4z2/Highlight.NP3
I also recommend the reading of this excellent article by Spencer Cox, here on the website, about this subject :
https://photographylife.com/exposing-to-the-right-explained
And the complement by Nasim Mansurov :
https://photographylife.com/exposing-to-the-left
BTW, Happy New Year
@prg-lagarde: thanks for the useful information. The biggest boon however would be if camera manufacturers would implement the technique in the cameras, so that we can all benefit from it.
@darin-marcus: Thanks for the trouble of replying. I had hoped that the subject would have had a wider response, as a way to alert camera manufacturers.
@joopv Unfortunately, I think the odds of Nikon or anyone else implementing a true RAW histogram are pretty low. So far, only Leica does it and only in their monochrome camera, as far as I know. It boggles my mind that this is a still a limitation, but so it goes.
It's possible to simulate a true RAW histogram or work around it as covered in my ETTR article, but there's no perfect method that I'm aware of.
@spencer, Thanks Spencer, what do you think is the main hurdle for the big companies? Is it developing software, constructing hardware or cost and competition? I am prepared to pay a bit more for inbuilt ETTR, and I think it would give a substantial competitive advantage to whoever is first.
@joopv Hard to say. Probably more of a software issue than anything. I would also be willing to upgrade to a camera for that feature, especially if it were combined with a programmable metering mode that could follow ETTR to specified strictness.
I would also love this feature. It's mind boggling that it's not a feature, or something like Raw-based zebras.
Maybe I'm completely off, but to my sense, it's likely that processing an histogram from a real 14bit raw live data is way more ressources consuming than from 8bit data => 4,4 trillions vs only 16 millions combinations to analyse/convert to live graph. It's only a camera after all ;).
I bet there may be workarounds, but how reliable they may be is probably questionnable.
@prg-lagarde > I am sure that processing power will play a role, but not being an expert on this I would find it disappointing if software would be the only bottleneck. My work-around is to view on the camera after the shot has been taken, and later in post processing to view the RAW file in FRV (Fast Raw Viewer), which gives you the real picture, with options to intervene.