Workaround for highlight blinkies in stills mode

[tajohnson]

Inspired by beatboxa's posts regarding innovative uses of custom picture controls, I have created one that allows me to have a workaround for the missing highlight blinkies in stills mode on the Z cameras.

The picture control is linear from 0 to 254, and at 255, drops back to 0. The result is that when a pixel saturates, it becomes black in the viewfinder. This makes it very easy to not just see that there is highlight clipping going on, but exactly where it is in the image. I couple the use of this picture control with exposure compensation on the lens control ring. With this combination, I can quickly, easily and accurately ETTR.

Here's a JPEG (extracted unprocessed from the NEF via NX Studio), showing what this particular image looked like in the viewfinder as I pressed the shutter button.


The blown hightlights are clearly evident.

As you can see, the blown lightlights are immediately obvious. Being able to see the blown highlights in realtime, and not just a spike at the right edge of the histogram, allows me to quickly adjust the image until the pixels that I want to save are evident. I'm finally confident that I'm exposing properly: not too bright where I'd be losing detail that I want to keep, and not too dark where I'd be unnecessarily sacrificing DR. I can quickly assess the trade-offs between blown hightlights and lost DR in the shadows and set the exposure accordingly.

As I said above, I have assigned EC to the lens control ring. I had tried this before and given up on it because, as with many others on this forum, I found the dial to be too sensitive. Now though, with the immediate contextual feedback, I find that it works very nicely.

You can make the same picture control in the free Nikon Picture Control Utility, or if you want to save some work, here's a link to a folder with mine.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11JDOGdWH8VtN8W466i_knVwh0v9eiWOB?usp=sharing

Oh, and if you're interested, here's the processed version of the same image.



There is a caveat. The blacked-out blown hightlights get recorded that way in the JPEG preview in the NEF and in SOOC JPEGs. If you shoot raw only, this isn't much of an issue because the preview gets discarded when you process the NEF. Clearly, this approach wouldn't work for shooting JPEG or RAW+JPEG.

Todd

 

[Virtual Photon]

Nice workaround!

 

[HaroldC3]

Thanks very much for this. I'm going to give it a try on my Z7.

 

[mainoo]

Inspired by beatboxa's posts regarding innovative uses of custom picture controls, I have created one that allows me to have a workaround for the missing highlight blinkies in stills mode on the Z cameras.

The picture control is linear from 0 to 254, and at 255, drops back to 0. The result is that when a pixel saturates, it becomes black in the viewfinder. This makes it very easy to not just see that there is highlight clipping going on, but exactly where it is in the image. I couple the use of this picture control with exposure compensation on the lens control ring. With this combination, I can quickly, easily and accurately ETTR.

Here's a JPEG (extracted unprocessed from the NEF via NX Studio), showing what this particular image looked like in the viewfinder as I pressed the shutter button.


The blown hightlights are clearly evident.

As you can see, the blown lightlights are immediately obvious. Being able to see the blown highlights in realtime, and not just a spike at the right edge of the histogram, allows me to quickly adjust the image until the pixels that I want to save are evident. I'm finally confident that I'm exposing properly: not too bright where I'd be losing detail that I want to keep, and not too dark where I'd be unnecessarily sacrificing DR. I can quickly assess the trade-offs between blown hightlights and lost DR in the shadows and set the exposure accordingly.

As I said above, I have assigned EC to the lens control ring. I had tried this before and given up on it because, as with many others on this forum, I found the dial to be too sensitive. Now though, with the immediate contextual feedback, I find that it works very nicely.

You can make the same picture control in the free Nikon Picture Control Utility, or if you want to save some work, here's a link to a folder with mine.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11JDOGdWH8VtN8W466i_knVwh0v9eiWOB?usp=sharing

Oh, and if you're interested, here's the processed version of the same image.



There is a caveat. The blacked-out blown hightlights get recorded that way in the JPEG preview in the NEF and in SOOC JPEGs. If you shoot raw only, this isn't much of an issue because the preview gets discarded when you process the NEF. Clearly, this approach wouldn't work for shooting JPEG or RAW+JPEG.

Todd

isn't that just the strangest. I am considering buying the Z6 and I was researching the lack of exposure aids (eg blinkies) and came across your contribution to a thread in which you suggested a way of manipulating picture controls to enable realtime indication of blown highlights. I thought "I wonder how that works" and considered sending you a PM but thought I would do some research first and I found this!! Thanks for posting it.

 

[michaeladawson]

Very clever.

I've never played with picture controls. Can you do the same thing as you did here but change the curve on individual channels? Point being you could get red "blinkies" or magenta "blinkies" if one wanted.

 

[mainoo]

As I understand things even in cameras that provide blinkies by default, what they are reporting is not true saturation of the raw photosite but an upper saturation limit for the camera manufacturer's target jpeg. In other words, If we took your sample image above in to raw digger would we see the same level of over-exposure? A useful experiment would be to adjust the exposure until it just starts to show clipping on the LCD and take that in to Rawdigger or some other raw analysis tool to see whether any overexposure is observed. If none is seen then it can be assumed that the 255 point does not represent raw photosite saturation. I hope I am making some sense (I ask because my understanding of the topic is sketchy).

Thanks

 

[Aleks Che]

Inspired by beatboxa's posts regarding innovative uses of custom picture controls, I have created one that allows me to have a workaround for the missing highlight blinkies in stills mode on the Z cameras.

The picture control is linear from 0 to 254, and at 255, drops back to 0. The result is that when a pixel saturates, it becomes black in the viewfinder. This makes it very easy to not just see that there is highlight clipping going on, but exactly where it is in the image. I couple the use of this picture control with exposure compensation on the lens control ring. With this combination, I can quickly, easily and accurately ETTR.

Here's a JPEG (extracted unprocessed from the NEF via NX Studio), showing what this particular image looked like in the viewfinder as I pressed the shutter button.


The blown hightlights are clearly evident.

As you can see, the blown lightlights are immediately obvious. Being able to see the blown highlights in realtime, and not just a spike at the right edge of the histogram, allows me to quickly adjust the image until the pixels that I want to save are evident. I'm finally confident that I'm exposing properly: not too bright where I'd be losing detail that I want to keep, and not too dark where I'd be unnecessarily sacrificing DR. I can quickly assess the trade-offs between blown hightlights and lost DR in the shadows and set the exposure accordingly.

As I said above, I have assigned EC to the lens control ring. I had tried this before and given up on it because, as with many others on this forum, I found the dial to be too sensitive. Now though, with the immediate contextual feedback, I find that it works very nicely.

You can make the same picture control in the free Nikon Picture Control Utility, or if you want to save some work, here's a link to a folder with mine.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11JDOGdWH8VtN8W466i_knVwh0v9eiWOB?usp=sharing

Oh, and if you're interested, here's the processed version of the same image.



There is a caveat. The blacked-out blown hightlights get recorded that way in the JPEG preview in the NEF and in SOOC JPEGs. If you shoot raw only, this isn't much of an issue because the preview gets discarded when you process the NEF. Clearly, this approach wouldn't work for shooting JPEG or RAW+JPEG.

Todd

A very original solution. Downloaded the topic-starter file Flat-Clip.NCP. I liked it, I tried it on my Nikon Z6 - it perfectly shows in real time in the viewfinder in black all reflections over 254. In the absence of a factory "zebra" in the "photography" mode to show the clipping of light participants, this solution has a right to exist. Until the manufacturer in its future firmware adds a "zebra" for Z cameras in the "photography" mode, I will definitely use this method proposed by the topic starter.
Special respect for the finished download. I slightly corrected this file in the Picture Control Utility 2 program to suit my desires (I set the sharping value in accordance with the Picture Control "Standard"), but everyone can do this "for themselves" on their own - the main thing is already there is a ready "reference point" in the form of the proposed file.

 

[dtc25]

Looks like a great solution - thanks! I’ve downloaded the file and I’ll try it next time I’m out.

 

[tajohnson]

Unless I'm missing something in the Picture Control Utility, there is only one tone curve. I don't see a way to set the tone curve separately for red, green and blue. That said, the result in the viewfinder is different when you have 1, 2 or 3 channels blown. I don't understand exactly what it's doing. Here's a contrived example. The blown highlights (much of the picture), are black, dark greenish-yellow, mid gray and light gray.



For full disclosure, I created this image in NX Studio by applying my picture control and a large amount of exposure compensation. I'd be surprised, but it's possible that NX Studio is doing something slightly different from what shows in the viewfinder. However, I know that I have seen the gray and dark greenish-yellow for blown highlights in the viewfinder.

Todd

 

[tajohnson]

Thank you. I'm glad it will be of use to you.

The hard part was getting the control points properly positioned. The picture controls fit what looks like a spline to the control points and splines don't fit this kind of curve well. That's the reason for the large number of control points at the upper end. I needed them in order to keep the spine from behaving poorly. Also, you can't make the custom curve window very big in the Picture Control Utility, so positioning all of those points at the upper end was somewhat of a pain.



Todd

 

[tajohnson]

On Nikons, the tone curve of the target jpeg is set by the picture control. There is always a picture control in effect. I think the camera comes with 20 or so (Vivid, Neutral, etc.). There is demosaicing going on also and it is the combination of the two (plus saturation, clarity, sharpness, noise reduction, etc. in the picture control) that maps the raw data to the pixels that go to the in-camera JPEG compression to create the SOOC JPEG and raw preview.
I've not done the Rawdigger check to see exactly how close to (or over) clipping the exposure is when the picture control changes to black. I do know that in extreme cases I have needed to back off 1/3 of a stop beyond what the picture control indicates in order to avoid highlight clipping on pixels near the limit. An example of such a case is a moonrise over the ocean, where I wanted to avoid blowing out the moon while maximizing the DR in the dim reflections on the waves.
Todd

 

[mainoo]

I've not done the Rawdigger check to see exactly how close to (or over) clipping the exposure is when the picture control changes to black. I do know that in extreme cases I have needed to back off 1/3 of a stop beyond what the picture control indicates in order to avoid highlight clipping on pixels near the limit. An example of such a case is a moonrise over the ocean, where I wanted to avoid blowing out the moon while maximizing the DR in the dim reflections on the waves.
Todd

If the aim is to shoot raw and ETTR until the raw photo sites are full then getting the blinkies calibrated to raw clipping is important. All I think would be required to accomplish that is play with the sliders for your picture control until the 2 converge (picture goes black and raw digger shows roughly the same amount of overexposure). But I think the hard work is done and cleverly too (congrats). I look forward to trying it when I get a Z camera.

 

[john isaacs]

I made a change to the custom curve so that the minimum value for dark pixels is 1. This way, the only values in the JPG that are actually zero are maximum clipped values. In post processing, values of zero can be replaced with 255, removing the black areas without changing any truly dark values. This should help with post processing blown highlights if shooting RAW+JPG.

I don't know why Nikon won't fix this, but there is clearly something wrong with their user interface engineering.

 

[rhlpetrus]

Thanks, good to know when I get my Z. Does it work with all Z bodies?

 

[tajohnson]

Thanks, good to know when I get my Z. Does it work with all Z bodies?

It's just a custom picture control, so yes, it should work on all Z bodies. And, while I haven't tried it, I expect that it would even work in live view mode on a Nikon DSLR.

 

[ik2]

Thank you very much, i just downloaded the file and its amazing in my z7. I wonder if there was a way to show also the underexposed pixels lets say with blue color? Anyway thank you again for your solution!

 

[rhlpetrus]

Thanks, good to know when I get my Z. Does it work with all Z bodies?

It's just a custom picture control, so yes, it should work on all Z bodies. And, while I haven't tried it, I expect that it would even work in live view mode on a Nikon DSLR.

Again thanks, very useful.

 

[tajohnson]

Thank you very much, i just downloaded the file and its amazing in my z7. I wonder if there was a way to show also the underexposed pixels lets say with blue color? Anyway thank you again for your solution!

I tried something like that, where, in addition to mapping 255-in to 0-out on the high end, I mapped 0-in to 255-out on the low end. I found that it didn't help much. Perhaps pushing it up a little so that the clipping point wasn't exactly 0 might have made it more useful. I put the picture control file in the same folder, alongside the one that only shows the clipped highlights:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11JDOGdWH8VtN8W466i_knVwh0v9eiWOB?usp=sharing

It's unimaginatively called Flat-Clip2.NP3. Feel free to give it a try.

 

[wooders636]

Inspired by beatboxa's posts regarding innovative uses of custom picture controls, I have created one that allows me to have a workaround for the missing highlight blinkies in stills mode on the Z cameras.

The picture control is linear from 0 to 254, and at 255, drops back to 0. The result is that when a pixel saturates, it becomes black in the viewfinder. This makes it very easy to not just see that there is highlight clipping going on, but exactly where it is in the image. I couple the use of this picture control with exposure compensation on the lens control ring. With this combination, I can quickly, easily and accurately ETTR.

Here's a JPEG (extracted unprocessed from the NEF via NX Studio), showing what this particular image looked like in the viewfinder as I pressed the shutter button.


The blown hightlights are clearly evident.

As you can see, the blown lightlights are immediately obvious. Being able to see the blown highlights in realtime, and not just a spike at the right edge of the histogram, allows me to quickly adjust the image until the pixels that I want to save are evident. I'm finally confident that I'm exposing properly: not too bright where I'd be losing detail that I want to keep, and not too dark where I'd be unnecessarily sacrificing DR. I can quickly assess the trade-offs between blown hightlights and lost DR in the shadows and set the exposure accordingly.

As I said above, I have assigned EC to the lens control ring. I had tried this before and given up on it because, as with many others on this forum, I found the dial to be too sensitive. Now though, with the immediate contextual feedback, I find that it works very nicely.

You can make the same picture control in the free Nikon Picture Control Utility, or if you want to save some work, here's a link to a folder with mine.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11JDOGdWH8VtN8W466i_knVwh0v9eiWOB?usp=sharing

Oh, and if you're interested, here's the processed version of the same image.



There is a caveat. The blacked-out blown hightlights get recorded that way in the JPEG preview in the NEF and in SOOC JPEGs. If you shoot raw only, this isn't much of an issue because the preview gets discarded when you process the NEF. Clearly, this approach wouldn't work for shooting JPEG or RAW+JPEG.

Todd

Thanks for this, looks of interest in hunting blinkies.



Just one question how I do take the downloaded file and get it onto my Z6 to use? I’m not familiar with how this works.



Cheers

 

[tajohnson]

Thanks for this, looks of interest in hunting blinkies.

Just one question how I do take the downloaded file and get it onto my Z6 to use? I’m not familiar with how this works.

Cheers

Copy the file to NIKON/CUSTOMPC on your memory chip
Put the chip in the camera & turn the camera on
Press the MENU button on the camera
Under the PHOTO SHOOTING MENU, tap on Manage Picture Control
Tap on Load/Save
Tap on Copy to Camera
From there, it should prompt you to select the picture control, which should be called Flat-Clip, and the custom picture control slot to put it in (which will be C1, if you've never done this before).

To activate it, under the PHOTO SHOOTING MENU, tap on Set Picture Control
Scroll to "C1 Flat-Clip" and select OK

There are 28 pre-installed picture controls on my Z7 and the custom ones are at the bottom of the list. Note that the list "wraps" which means that you can scroll up from the top of the list and get to the bottom of the list with just one button press.