Workaround for highlight blinkies in stills mode

[Ernie Misner]

Just wanted to say THANK YOU for developing this picture profile. Not having highly clipping warning in photography was driving me crazy on my new Nikon Zf. This is not elegant, but fairly simple, and more importantly - works!!

I'm sorry if I missed something here. I realize it's an old thread, but a few comments here are new. When this post first came out we didn't have the Z8 or Z9. Didn't my Z7II have blinkies (clipping warning)? My Z8 definitely has that feature. But I have to review an image to see the blinkies work. Or are you talking about in live view mode? Thanks.

Yes, it is about the highlight warning in live view mode.

The jpeg file will have the imprint of the overexposed blinkies- so only for those who shoot Raw +/- jpeg

Thanks - I shoot raw only, so that must be why I'm not seeing any highlight alert in live view mode.

NEF vs JPEG

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Ernie Misner

Ernie Misner

Explore Ernie Misner’s 742 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

"The best photographer is the one who has the most fun!" - Jason Bradley, Outdoor Photographer Magazine

 

[Oscar Mc]

Hello! This is very interesting, I try to log in to download the profile but it doesn't work, could you put the profile back so I can try it? thank you so much!

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[tajohnson]

I have restored it at the following link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_3agtPdZAaHA3TOvF-Qs4Yq3KFga5f5g?usp=sharing

-Todd

 

[Oscar Mc]

Very grateful, after trying it I think that for me it is now essential, it is fantastic to adjust the live exposure to expose the best possible

 

[tajohnson]

I'm glad that you've found it helpful. I still use it myself > 90% of the time.

 

[getoutandshoot]

My thanks as well to tajohnson, for letting us know about this workaround.

I have now loaded the custom Picture Control onto my Z8. I confirmed it is working as expected, and I look forward to trying it out to see if it helps me.

My particular current use case is bird photography, using long telephoto lenses. Usually I use natural light (occasionally flash). The natural light is often changing depending on the clouds, or when the birds move about in foliage, for example. Especially when the bird is in direct sunlight, the brighter white feathers or the bird's bill reflecting sunlight are the most common parts of the bird where I get blown highlights. I have the lens control ring set to exposure compensation, and I've been trying to train myself to constantly watch the histogram more closely, but as others said, it is quite small. Now hopefully I have another visual cue to help me, so thanks again.

A few additional thoughts, observations:

As someone else said, I wonder whether a different bright color would work better than black to show blown highlights. Especially because the area that is blown out may be rather small and it won't "blink" to help me see it. I'm thinking maybe fluorescent pink or orange? Is that easy to do?

I had my camera set to capture both RAW and JPEG for no particular good reason. I switched my "Birds" shooting bank to RAW only now. It might improve my buffer depth a little, and save hard drive space. I assume there is no risk if I keep capturing RAW + JPEG with the new custom picture control, it's just that I need to remember that any JPEG file with blown highlights may not be usable?

Most folks maybe already know this, but I noticed that if you want to save/back up the Picture Control to your memory card, you have to do that independently from the Shooting Menu-->Manage Picture Controls. i.e., they will not be saved/backed up when I save my general camera settings/shooting banks. Also it appears that the proper location on the card for the Picture Control files is under the "NIKON" folder and then in a sub-folder named "CUSTOMPC" (which did not exist on my card but I created it when I transferred the Picture Control file from my computer to the card).

Dave

 

[Oscar Mc]

After several days using your profile I am not considering using another...

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[mdavis5011]

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

Can you indicate how to make a custom profile to show the pixel 255 as 0 using the custom picture control app that nikon has? Ive downloaded the app and i see where it says use custom profile but i can't see how to change just pixel 255.

Thank you

 

[tajohnson]

You have to add multiple control points. You drag the furthest right one to x=255, y=0. Then drag the next one to 254, 254. You need to add a few more at (253, 253), (252, 252) and (251, 251). This is because the Nikon tool fits a spline curve to the control points.

It is difficult to precisely position the control points using the Nikon tool. It is actually easier to explicitly enter the values using the tool at https://nikonpc.com/. This website allows you to type the numbers in.

 

[Mariometras]

Requeste for clarification on the use of this custon picture controç

1 . I take a photo in raw format
2. I edit the image in NX Studio
3. After the editing, the image still contains some burnt highlights.
3. Save the image in TIF or JPG.

When viewing the image saved in the new format, the black color continues to be visible.
How can I see the final image correctly?

 

[PankajDubey]

Requeste for clarification on the use of this custon picture controç

1 . I take a photo in raw format
2. I edit the image in NX Studio
3. After the editing, the image still contains some burnt highlights.
3. Save the image in TIF or JPG.

When viewing the image saved in the new format, the black color continues to be visible.
How can I see the final image correctly?

All I can think of is make sure it is the RAW file that is being edited. I take NEF+jpeg fine combo and many a times I end up editing the jpeg one. I now import only NEF files just to avaoid the pain.

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Pankaj

https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/1160557041/albums/chopta-birding-uttarakhand-india

 

[Horshack]

Requeste for clarification on the use of this custon picture controç

1 . I take a photo in raw format
2. I edit the image in NX Studio
3. After the editing, the image still contains some burnt highlights.
3. Save the image in TIF or JPG.

When viewing the image saved in the new format, the black color continues to be visible.
How can I see the final image correctly?

When processing the raw, change the picture profile in NX Studio to something other than the custom control that burnt the highlights.

 

[vwillrocku]

Hi Todd
I am late to the party as I am only a owner of Z f recently. Your solution works really well as I sometimes overexpose in hurry. Thanks a lot for your sharing and have a good day!

 

[SMichel]

Hi, first a big thanks to tajohnsonis. I would like to ask if there a reason why the review blinkies are a ⅓ exposure stop less than the live black highlights??? I mean that when I apply the 'hack' I would go to the point where there is no black highlights, take the photo and on reviewing there are still a bit of blinkies.... Is there a EASY way to correct this? Otherwise not a big deal!!! I just go ⅔ stop below the black highlights. I hope my post is clear enough... o

 

[PankajDubey]

Hi, first a big thanks to tajohnsonis. I would like to ask if there a reason why the review blinkies are a ⅓ exposure stop less than the live black highlights??? I mean that when I apply the 'hack' I would go to the point where there is no black highlights, take the photo and on reviewing there are still a bit of blinkies.... Is there a EASY way to correct this? Otherwise not a big deal!!! I just go ⅔ stop below the black highlights. I hope my post is clear enough... o

Try these set of picture controls too-

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67163910

 

[SMichel]

Ok thank you very much I will try that!!!