Stop! Blinking!

May 27, 2007 10:42 PM

How do I turn off the annoying "this is all the white in your photo" 'feature' on my Nikon D80?

On playback, I can see all my photos on the LCD screen but all the pure white areas blink white to black. It annoys me to no end. I know the feature is useful for a few reasons, but mainly I want to disable it and for the life of me I can't figure out how. HALP!

posted by travosaurus to technology (6 comments total)

How to turn off Highlights warning in playback mode?
posted by aye at 10:58 PM on May 27, 2007

Thank you! I guess 'highlights' was an obvious term I just didn't think of.
posted by travosaurus at 11:12 PM on May 27, 2007

It's a warning that you overexposed the scene, so if you see it then expose lower and get 1) no blink, and 2) a better photo.
posted by cmiller at 6:23 AM on May 28, 2007

Listen to cmiller. That doesn't mean "pure white", it means "sensor got too much light here and thus has no idea what color the scene is".
posted by dmd at 9:04 AM on May 28, 2007

... to be fair, sometimes the blinking really does indicate that you shot an object that is very close to pure white, and the scene is exposed properly. This doesn't happen often, but it is possible.
posted by blindcarboncopy at 11:36 PM on May 28, 2007

I bet it doesn't blink for "very close" to white -- only when you're (almost certainly) losing information. You're speeding and you peg the needle at the high end; you may be going exactly that speed, or you may be going ten times that. The blinking light means "this gauge is no longer accurate; this value is off the scale."
posted by cmiller at 1:03 PM on May 29, 2007