Why Don't Camera's Have Raw Histograms?

After a recent near world record beating long thread on raw histograms one of the outcomes was the re-establishment of the fact that camera's do not display histograms of the actual raw data.

So that begs the obvious question - Why not? 👿

I'm no expert on why that is the case but since no camera manufacturer afaik offers raw histograms in-camera I assume there must be a valid reason but I cannot see it.

I would think that any additional cost to offer choices in the camera's menus that include raw histograms, after their implementation, would be minimal. Maybe not?

Can anyone shed some light on why cameras do not offer raw histograms?

Thank you Bob. That makes sense overall although some of it is going over the top of my head but what I have difficulty getting my head around is that since a camera can display a live histogram of the internally processed raw data then the raw data must exist somewhere in-camera when the live histogram is being displayed.

In that case I would have thought it should be fairly straight forward to optionally display that raw data as a histogram.

I doubt it's impossible, but obviously for some reason all the camera manufacturers have put in-camera raw histograms in their "too hard" basket 😕

That would put those developers in an awkward position. It's done in MagicLantern for some old Canon cameras.
Btw from MagicLantern analysis, as far as I remember, it's not a difficult task actually. It's not very hard to get data for the raw histogram from the raw buffer directly.
I bet it would be roughly the same complexity (that is, low) for any other camera that can write raw files.

So, I'd blame inertia and low demand.

Isn't the question really - do they (the camera manufacturers) see a sales advantage in providing raw histograms?
If that is correct, they, presumably, have decided there is no sales advantage

Would anyone here change their camera brand/model if the only distinguishing feature was availability of a raw histogram - serious question?

Tim

Realistically no matter the reason; these should be implemented in multi-thousand pound camera's produced in this day and age. And...they would be extremely useful to maximise data quality at collection stage.

Not to stress photographers with too voluminous explanations. No joke.

Yes, I suspect that would be at least part of their justification for not implementing raw histograms in-camera.

Yes, back in a day I bought a couple of Canon 5DMkIII cameras to install Magic Lantern firmware exactly for the purpose of having raw histogram.

There probably isn't a significant sales advantage, yes, but my 90D also has many features I will never use as well.

Not unless I needed a new camera for some reason. But if/when I need a new camera, if two cameras tick all my other boxes but one of them offers in-camera raw histograms then it's a no-brainer for me. I will buy the camera with raw histograms included as an option.

I think that is part of the problem. Maybe manufacturers are "dumbing down" their cameras' manuals too much (just look at the definition of exposure they use in their manuals 😉 ). If raw histograms was the only option then yes, that would be a very significant issue at least for "mum and dad" photographers.

But raw histograms should be offered as an additional option to those already available. In that case anyone not interested in raw histograms can simply ignore those pages in the manual and use their preferred histogram.

People who buy FastRawViewer / RawDigger, they want raw histogram, and they are quite a few :)

But then the flip side of that is if camera manufacturers introduced in-camare raw histograms then the sales of those apps might plummet because of the reduced demand for them.

Good point - hadn't thought of that...!

But would they all translate into additional sales of cameras for the camera manufacturers?

It looks like the camera manufacturers don't think so.

ML, as far as I remember, keeps the existing formats and structures - so for the actual developers it shouldn't be a very difficult task.

Although they'd have to take care of the whole processing chain including manufacturer's editing software. Still, not a big deal I think.

But why implement it if it won't increase sales...
Another question raised in this thread, do the developers even know somebody wants the feature? At least Canon developers should know as no doubt they studied Magic Lantern.

Two independent things, culling and shooting. In fact, having raw histogram in a camera makes having raw histogram while culling more desirable.