What's a blown out highlight?

[jpeka65844]

Can someone provide examples? I'm not sure I understand what this is. Understanding Exposure mentions them but he doesn't say for sure what they ARE......

 

[fitzperry]

It's where the highlights in a photo are overexposed to the point where you cannot see any detail in them. It may occur because the entire photo is overexposed, or it may be because the dynamic range of the image is too broad for the camera to capture it all, in which case you'll either lose detail in the shadows or in the highlights (or maybe both).

Here is an example. My younger dd's hair is totally blown out (she's also slightly out of focus, but I still like the picture --you have to shoot fast to get them both smiling and being nice to one another, and I didn't have time to check my settings ).

 

[seashoreCM]

Blown out highlight -- Something is bright and something is brighter but you cannot tell the difference because the former comes out at maximum brightness.

If you need to see that highlight you have to take another shot with lesser exposure so that the bright object comes out at less than maximum and the brighter object can come out as maximum and you can see the difference.

WHen you reduce the exposure you may run into buried shadows. Then there is no solution, the camera and/or film is incapable of representing all the details in the scene, from darkest to brightest. The technical term is insufficient dynamic range.

You could take two pictures, one with a higher exposure and one with a lower exposure, and at some future date use Photoshop or other editing tool to cut and paste sections so you have a composite picture with all the highlights and all the shadows.

Digital camera hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/digicam.htm

 

[mabas9395]

You know how when you have a photo on your computer and most programs let you adjust the brightness to make it darker or brighter? Sometimes if your photo is a little too bright you can darken it to make it look right. But if your highlights are blown out, then they are too bright for you to make any adjustments to to make them look better. The camera just wasn't able to record what that part of the picture looked like because too much light was captured. Like when you open the back of your film camera and the film gets exposed.

btw, the range of brightness in a photo is usually divided into three different areas; the highlights, the midtones and the shadows.

 

[Geoff_M]

Here's the "geek" angle... Each color pixel is represented by three numbers (from 0 to 255)... one each for the red, green, and blue values. A pixel that has values of 0, 0, 0 is pure black, while a pixel with values of 255, 255, 255 is pure white. While a "pure" red pixel, would be 255, 0, 0.

A "blown out" pixel is a "pure white" pixel at 255, 255, 255. So why does this matter in digital photography? It doesn't look so good for one thing on your screen, but there's also a major problem with printing. A blown out pixel shows up as "nothing" on the printed paper... literally. In order to make "pure white" the printer will not deposit any ink on that area of the photo. A printer can't make "white", it relies on the color on the paper for "whiteness". If the area blown out is large enough, it will look like there is a "hole" in your image. There will be absolutely no details in that region.