The Blinkies/Overexposure on D80

[MartinS]

Hi all,

I bought my D80 a few weeks ago and I am still reading with interest the reviews on the performance of this camera. One of the issues I note with this camera was the overexposure issue which IIRC was settled with the firmware update of 1.01. My D80 already has this 1.01 version when I bought it but I notice it still has some overexposure on some photographs despite stepping down a few stops on the exposure especially with shots taken in the middle of the day etc. I would like to ask the other more experienced D80 users, or any other Nikon DSLRers out there if,

1. This is normal considering how harsh our sunlight can be here and stepping down on the exposure is a normal, expected thing to do.

2. There is any "acceptable amount" of overexposure that can be tolerated in pictures.

Of course I could shoot RAW but I still consider myself too low on the learning curve to attempt this and would rather leave more space on my SD card for practice in getting my technique right then shooting first and then getting it right on the computer later, which admittingly I have no time for.
When I was on P&S cameras, I had no worries about the blinkies, now it seems to be my one big issue!

Any advice will be much appreciated.

Martin

 

[Camm]

A newbie here with D80 1.01 too. Some of my pics with high contrast tends to have the white blown out as well, but I'm aware of this fault before I bought it. Is there any claims that 1.01 have improvements over overexposure issue? Read from dpreview and nikonian site that the latest firmware have no visible improvements over this. Workaround is to avoid 3D matrix...use center-weighted instead. Oh well, i don't see much difference between these two modes though :bsmilie: Still learning

 

[ExplorerZ]

can use contrast -2... it helps to reduce the amount of details lost due to over/underexposure, but of cos at the same time your pic become not as contrasty

 

[MartinS]

A newbie here with D80 1.01 too. Some of my pics with high contrast tends to have the white blown out as well, but I'm aware of this fault before I bought it. Is there any claims that 1.01 have improvements over overexposure issue? Read from dpreview and nikonian site that the latest firmware have no visible improvements over this. Workaround is to avoid 3D matrix...use center-weighted instead. Oh well, i don't see much difference between these two modes though :bsmilie: Still learning

Hmm..yeah come to think of it, I do recall now reading something about 1.01 having no improvements over the overexposure issue....so I guess I stand corrected. I swear my memory is going these days..
I will however try to not use the 3D matrix metering and see how it turns out.

Thanks for the tip..