Brand new to photography shutter and exposure troubles

[Teufelhunden]

Hello, I have a Nikon D40 that my wife just bought me as Ive always wanted to get into photography. I obviously did something to the camera before R.T.F.M. because now when I take a photo in the preview screen there is, well, I guess a "white noise" its blinking black and white on parts of the photo that are white. This is in all modes, Auto, action, M, A, S, P, etc.

Now after messing up the camera I turned to the manual. I shuld of done that first I guess but I was to excited and like most guys just jumped right in. So the manual says in the troubleshooting section it says, "Randomly-spaced bright pixels (noise) appears in photographs. The solution says Lower ISO sensitivity shutter speed is slower than 1s: use noise reduction.

Ok, so I go into my menu my ISO is set to automatic and noise reduction is turned on so I am at a loss. I thought maybe my exposure might be off, but the meter is in the middle.

Any help is appreciated, hopefully I can get this resolved as I am looking forward to contribute photos in the future. The fight club section looks like fun!

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

I'm guessing that the white blinking that you are seeing...is the blown highlight warning. It means that your exposure was too high and parts of your photo have lost detail and turned white. It doesn't have anything to do with noise. Noise is what you typically get when you use a higher ISO setting.

You may have accidentally changed your EC (exposure compensation) and you are over exposing your photos...which would cause some things to show up brighter than you want them to be.
Even if you haven't set EC too high...you can still use it to correct the problem...just turn it down until your highlights aren't blowing out.

Also, you need to relalize the limitations of photography and your camera. There is a limit to the range of tones that you can capture in one exposure. If you expose for dark areas...areas that are too bight might be blown out. If you decrease the exposure, you can get the highlights back, but the darker areas may be lost in shadow.

So, it's not the end of the world if your review image is flashing. It just means that those areas are blown out. If you don't care about those areas, and the rest of the image is good..then don't worry about it.

Also, READ THIS.

 

[gsgary]

Hello, I have a Nikon D40 that my wife just bought me as Ive always wanted to get into photography. I obviously did something to the camera before R.T.F.M. because now when I take a photo in the preview screen there is, well, I guess a "white noise" its blinking black and white on parts of the photo that are white. This is in all modes, Auto, action, M, A, S, P, etc.

Now after messing up the camera I turned to the manual. I shuld of done that first I guess but I was to excited and like most guys just jumped right in. So the manual says in the troubleshooting section it says, "Randomly-spaced bright pixels (noise) appears in photographs. The solution says Lower ISO sensitivity shutter speed is slower than 1s: use noise reduction.

Ok, so I go into my menu my ISO is set to automatic and noise reduction is turned on so I am at a loss. I thought maybe my exposure might be off, but the meter is in the middle.

Any help is appreciated, hopefully I can get this resolved as I am looking forward to contribute photos in the future. The fight club section looks like fun!

Check your histogram it should be troughs and peaks but yours are over to the right and you have overexposed the shot make your aperture smaller (larger number F stop) or raise your shutter speed

 

[Teufelhunden]

Thank you for the help. I believe that was the problem (EC set incorrectly) Ive taken a few shots indoors and have not gotten the "blown out" image on the screen. Ill take it out later and give it a try. Once again thanks for the help. Ill also check out the histogram page a little more in depth later. Thanks again

 

[Steph]

Read your manual from front to back cover. It is a good start to learn how to use your camera. Moreover, somewhere in it, it says how to reset to default factory settings when you've 'experimented' with too many buttons!

 

[tirediron]

Read your manual from front to back cover. It is a good start to learn how to use your camera. Moreover, somewhere in it, it says how to reset to default factory settings when you've 'experimented' with too many buttons!

+1 :thumbup:

 

[Adour]

All the above posters are correct with regard to the blown highlights, however, just so you know that is a review mode on the camera which, it seems, you inadvertently selected.

When viewing a photo on the LCD screen if you press up on the D-Pad on the right you get the following revie modes:

up once: Basic shot info including camera / shutter / F-Stop etc
up twice: image optimization info
Up Three: Highlight (the flashing you were seeing on your dispay)
up four: basic histogram (dont use this one)
up five: Back to the basic review of the shot.

If you press OK on the D-Pad you will get a menu, select filter effects and press OK again and then select Color balance and press OK again.

This will give you a RGB histogram (and thereafter you can access just by pressing OK 3 times) which is one of the very good (if slightly hidden) features of the D40.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d40/users-guide/index.htm
Also, a good 3rd party manual for the D40 can be found here: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d40/users-guide/index.htm

Hope this helps.

LJ