Upper areas of blue water background goes white

I have a Nikon D200 and noticed, especially on vertical compositions, the upper areas of the blue water background blowing out to white.

Is this to do with a lack of dynamic range?

I heard the D300 can cope with sunballs, so will the D300 fix this problem?

Also, what is the highest ISO on the D300 people are happy to use on blue water backgrounds?

Thanks

Mary

I have a Nikon D200 and noticed, especially on vertical compositions, the upper areas of the blue water background blowing out to white.

Is this to do with a lack of dynamic range?

I heard the D300 can cope with sunballs, so will the D300 fix this problem?

Also, what is the highest ISO on the D300 people are happy to use on blue water backgrounds?

Hi,

It is called "whiteout".

Yes it is because of lack of dynamic range.

D300 is way better at that.

I don't like going past 800... but never really looked into it.

Maybe because I never shot film more than ISO800.

Under-exposing the background or creative composition (placing something/someone right on the sun ball) also helps.

Good luck

Accoding to Dxomark which Im somewhat cautious of, it claims half a stop better dynamic range on the D300 over the D200, ie about 12 vs 11.5

Will that really make that huge a difference?

Otara

No. If you overexpose the water you overexpose the water.

What this means is that if you expose the shot so that the top is JUST under the level of having "blinking highlights" then you will get detail in the shadows 12 stops under, vs 11.5 stops. Does that 1/2 stop make a difference? No, not really.

What DOES make a difference is knocking down some of the blue light that is overwhelming the B pixels on your sensor (saturating them) and not letting the R and G light get to the sensor. To correct that, you can use a color filter on the lens. See some of the articles here.

Cheers

James

Mary ... can you post an example? It might be helpful to see what you are talking about.

I have found that underexposing the mid-water by 1-2 stops and carefully adjusting the RAW image usually deals with this problem. Sometimes you can use the white as part of the composition. The trick is to avoid the cyan cast around it that comes with even a hint of over-exposure and that I've never been able to take out with RAW or Photoshop processing.

I find the biggest difficulty in getting close enough with Inon strobes to light wide-angle subjects when the f-stop is above f16; it was much easier, paradoxically, on my old D70 that had high-speed electronic shutter emulation and allowed me to expose the surface at a more open f-stop and a shutter speed of 1/500 sec.

Tim