Lumix Chromakey Viewfinder

February 6, 2009 4:39 PM

My digital camera displays all colors but white on the lcd and viewfinder... Anything white blinks in and out -- but the pictures appear normally when downloaded to the computer. I can't find a firmware upgrade anywhere... It's a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5.
posted by acro to Technology (9 answers total)

The blinking white is telling you that the area is over-exposed. It's a feature, not a bug. Refer to page 28 of the manual - the setting is called "Highlight display"
posted by 0xFCAF at 4:43 PM on February 6, 2009

I believe this is a common feature on digital cameras, the point of which is to make it obvious on a tiny, low-res LCD where in the image your hilights are blowing out, where they've hit pure white there's no colour detail at all.
posted by Evstar at 4:43 PM on February 6, 2009

From the manual for that camera:

"When setting [HIGHLIGHT] to [ON] on the [SETUP] menu (P23) while the auto review or review function is activated, any white saturated area (extremely bright or glistening part) on the picture appears blinking in black and white. If you compensate the exposure to minus, referring to the histogram and then take a picture again, it may result in a good picture.

posted by aubilenon at 4:43 PM on February 6, 2009

If this is happening all the time, or you are getting large areas and not just small point highlights flashing, then you might have accidentally turned your camera's exposure compensation up. Unless you are shooting in strange light, the camera's meter should be trying to avoid the flashing highlights as much as possible.
posted by scose at 5:21 PM on February 6, 2009

I find that, with my Nikons, the highlights clip like that more often than I personally would like at their default exposure settings. I think that camera manufacturers tilt the exposure more towards the vivid at the expense of that small amount of clipping because most people prefer vividy pictures and don't really care that bright white objects are technically overexposed.

If the pictures look good to you, they are good, so don't worry about it. Personally, it drives me batty and I almost always shoot at -0.5EV.
posted by mindsound at 6:28 PM on February 6, 2009

Thanks Metafilter, great answers.
I know it's a common camera here, but 4 minutes to the page reference (by two individuals), thats ... impressive.
posted by acro at 6:54 PM on February 6, 2009

Seriously, now - rconsider reading the manual. It's a fairly complicated camera, and you ought to know how it works. The manual is well-written and very comprehensive.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:12 PM on February 6, 2009

I didn't think it could actually be a 'feature' ... I thought I might have dropped the camera at some point or something.
posted by acro at 9:16 PM on February 6, 2009

I've known a number of other people who have thought that their camera was somehow broken because of the highlight clipping display mode. AHH TECHNOLOGY
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:38 PM on February 6, 2009