Nikon D80 Question

[kutplug]

Hello first time post here, my question may be basic for most but I can't seem to figure it out. I currently have a Nikon D80, when I take a picture, reguardless of what mode I'm in, the background always flashes. It seems to pick up anything that is white, ie clouds etc. I have combed the manual but have come up with nothing. Again still in the early stages of photography, but any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[SusanH1970]

What do you mean by the background flashes? Are you talking about the LCD screen, anything that's white/light colored in the photo blinks? If so, that means you've blown it out (overexposed).

[kutplug]

Yes, that's exactly what is happening. How do I correct the over exposure issue. Thanks

[kirbinster]

Reduce your exposure - faster shutter speed, higher f/stop number, or lower ISO - your choice.

[scootermcq]

Are you sure you are not viewing "highlights" in the lcd screen. Push the 4 way toggle up or down to scroll through the various displays... historgram, highlights, exif data, picture, etc. etc.

[GadgetRick]

There are a few good threads around here regarding exposure and how aperture, shutter speed, ISO affect it. I'd suggest reading through that and you'll understand what's happening. It's definately your camera telling you those parts are over exposed.

[scootermcq]

A histogram display is very helpful in telling whether you've got the exposure right, but to my mind isn't adequate by itself. With digital cameras, it's very important not to blow-out the highlights in a picture (they're similar to color positive film in that respect), since once you hit the maximum brightness, the image just saturates, and any highlight detail will be lost. A histogram display does a pretty good job of telling you how the image as a whole is doing, but what if there are just a few critical areas that you're worried about for the highlights? If only a small percentage of the total frame is involved, it won't account for many pixels. That means any peak at the "white" end of the histogram graph would be pretty small, and easy to miss (or just plain invisible). What to do? The folks at Nikon recognized this problem some time ago, and so have provided another special display mode on the D80 (as on most of their dSLRs) that they simply call "highlights," accessible via the Playback settings menu, under "Display Mode." This mode blinks any highlights that are saturated in any of the color channels. It does this by taking the nearly-white areas on the LCD and toggling them between white and black.

The above is a quote from imaging resource.com

Nikon D80 Digital Camera Operation - Full Review - The Imaging Resource!