Suddenly, without warning, tony cooper exclaimed (12/17/2008 9:36 PM):
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:21:49 -0500, jmc
wrote:

Suddenly, without warning, tony cooper exclaimed (12/17/2008 8:58 PM):
I don't understand this. I was shooting at a horse track earlier
today and took several images of horses being hosed down after their
workout. Here's a crop of one of images:
http://tonycooper.fileave.com/blowout.jpg

There's no white in that horse's coat. The horse had just been
sprayed with a hose, and that's water on the horse's coat. Blown-out.
Big time.

I was shooting on Programmed Auto (Nikon D40) and thought I had the
ISO set to 200. EXIF shows it was a 500. The rest was 1/500th at
5.6.

I've never seen a wet surface blown-out like this. Would the high ISO
do that?

(Forget the image itself. I just cropped this part out to show the
effect. This is out-of-focus, but shows the effect.)


You don't say if photographing horses is a regular thing for you, but
I've had the same kind of thing, photographing wet horses in sunshine.
The coat of a horse in good health can be very shiny/reflective,
especially when wet. Also, it sort of looks to me as if there might
still be some foamy sweat on the shoulder hotspot and in the lower
right, which wouldn't help. Could be wrong though. A polarizer would
help, I'd think.

Poor horse, looks tired and tense (eye looks tired, posture looks tense
- he's pulling back, or about to, I'd say).

I'm glad to see that others do not find the results particularly
strange. I took several shots of the horses being hosed down, and
some of the shots taken at a greater distance have less of a problem.
It never occurred to me to use my polarizer. When I looked at the
images in-camera, I thought the white was soap suds.

I watched several horses being hosed down. This is a harness horse
training facility, and several were brought in off the track. Some of
the horses seemed to really enjoy being hosed down, and some didn't
like it. Well, as best as I can judge a horse's emotions.

Tough horses to photograph. All bays, chestnuts, and dark horses.
Hard to get detailed shots in bright sun.



Yer tellin' me. I have a black cat. The last two horses I was riding
regular (and photographing of course) were a bay TB with no white at
all, and a jet black furball of a shetland pony.

Long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away, I was a Standardbred groom. My
personal opinion is an incorrectly applied check rein (the one that goes
straight up the top of the neck) can do permanent damage, over time.
Think of being forced to hold your nose in the air (or an arm for that
matter) whenever you run or work out...

jmc