"Try the following experiment with your camera. Place your camera on a tripod. Evenly light a test pattern like a step wedge. This will give you a subject with a known long tonality range. Now set your contrast to minimum. Shoot an image and note the histogram on the camera. Note how close the maximum step and the minimum step of the step wedge are apart on the histogram. Now set the contrast to maximum. Repeat the experiment. You will now find that the minimum and maximum steps in the wedge are off scale to the right and left. Now open the two images in your RAW image processor on your computer. You will now see that the two histograms displayed by your processing software are the same. The contrast setting had no affect (sic) on the RAW file.
What does all this mean? In order to display the full dynamic range of your camera in the histogram displayed on the back, you must set the contrast to minimum. You now can see the same dynamic range in the histogram on the camera as you will see it in your RAW processor on your computer.
When shooting RAW always set the contrast to minimum so that the histogram displays the full dynamic range the camera can capture. This makes for rather dull images on the back of your camera, but gives you better information about exposure and clipping."
O.K., I feel like a dunce but I'll ask the question anyhow. What's he mean when he says "set the contrast to minimum" and "set the contrast to maximum?" I don't offhand remember ever "setting the contrast" on any camera. The contrast of the scene is what it is. Does he have some special camera that I've never heard of or is he using different terminology for something we routinely do or what?
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