I appreciate your time Artie. I see what the blinkies are all about and know they’re there. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it longer. I put the materials in a shopping cart but the price of shipping hurts. And well I will think about your educational package you put together for my benefit. I don’t get the high cost to have it delivered when I know a better way. I have too much on my mind just now and rushed off the blinkies post. I will just keep my comments to my self from now on. I do admire what you do. Tom

Tom,

Your question makes it obvious that you would greatly benefit from getting and studying the educational package below that I designed for you:

ABP 2-Book Bundle.

Digital Basics.

5D Mark III User’s Guide.

The items in BLUE above are active links.

Blinkies, or Highlight Alert is a basic feature that should be enabled on all of your digital cameras (unless it is on automatically at all times and cannot be turned off.)

Here is a free excerpt from the 5D Mark III User’s Guide:

On “PLAY 3,” the third blue menu (with the camera set to P, Tv, Av, or M):

Highlight alert

Highlight alert should be enabled 100% of the time. While viewing images during playback areas that are either over-exposed or on the brink of over-exposure will flash black. These flashing highlights are called “blinkies.” When photographing black and white birds it may be ideal in some cases to work with a very few blinkies to ensure maximum detail and to reduce noise in the dark areas. In most cases minor areas that show as over-exposed can be easily recovered during the RAW conversion process by moving the Recovery Slider to the right. It is generally best not to go higher than 20-30 with the Recovery Slider.

When you have extensive areas of flashing highlights you need to reduce your exposure until they either disappear or are greatly minimized. In an automatic mode you do this by applying negative exposure compensation. In Manual mode you would select a faster shutter speed or a smaller aperture (higher f-number).