Any advice would be welcome. This Nikon "lost highlights" (rarely "lost shadows") thing with my D60 is getting depressing.

Granted I've had the camera less than a month - graduated from a Canon Ixus 700 - so I have loads to learn - but pctures with "lost highlights" look perfectly good on screen and nearly every dratted photo has "lost highlights".

So 1) can I ignore it?

    2) if I can't ignore it how can I fix it?

    3) having fixed it in any photo's I've taken that are worth the effort - how can I stop it at the shooting stage - given that multiple exposures with review in between might not be possible?

If this is boring, naive or going over old ground please feel free to ignore me.

Blinkies, or lost highlights contain no data. So nothing can be restored. You can replace the highlights with a different grey or colour, in an editing program, but that will most likely not look natural.

when there is no data, the printer will not put ink there opposite to lost shadows where the printer puts load of ink and you get the shiny black surface on the paper.

Pictures with a lot of contrast are hard to control. Imagine a castle with a bright sky, and the castle wall is in the shadow. If you expose for the castle the sky will be blinking and if you expose for the sky the castle wall will be dark, nearly black. Your camera has several exposure metering settings, I do not know the D60, but I assume it has matrix, centre-weighted and spot metering modes. The spot metering will give the above scenario. The centre weighted system is in normal circumstances my favourite and will put more emphasis on the centre part of the image as far as metering is concerned. However in High Contrast scenes the Matrix system might give you the best results, Here the camera compares sections from the whole sensor.

However it is unlikely that the camera can cope with a high contrast image and in those circumstances it is best to take some bracketed shots eg. 1 underexposed, 1 normal and 1 overexposed shot. Combining these in photoshop would give you the best result. If that is not possible however I would underexpose the image without getting blinkies and bring out the darker bits in photoshop and live with the noise this brings out. Alternative is shooting in RAW and under/overexpose that way for combining in PS.

Quick and simple method is using the Shadows/Highlights function in photoshop That can bring good results, or you can follow the masses and make one of these horrid HDR images.

Hope this is at least a bit of help.

Traditionally, Nikon metering systems preserved highlights. This meant images out of the camera tended to be underexposed by about one-third to two-thirds of a stop, but gave people the chance to post-process this. Recent cameras (D40, D80 and beyond) no longer do this, giving a more immediately accessible photo, at the expense of some highlight info being lost in some contrasty images.

Chances are the meter is not far out of true however, I had a Nikon D70 that routinely 'underexposed' by anout 0.7 stop, but when I checked it against a Kodak Grey Card and it was spot-on.

In addition to the concepts mentioned above, another fix is exposure compensation, putting in a -0.3 or even -0.7 compensation as standard.

It's also possible to load up a special tone curve, to make the camera more 'point and shoot' friendly. However, I suggest learning how to nail the exposure properly and robustly well before looking for this kind of fix. The site is here, and it explains what you need to do and whether it's worth doing it:

Fotogenic

Hope that helps. Personally, I always find you take one step forward and one back when you load up a custom curve. Better highlights, at the expense of the midrange. 

Good Link Alan, thanks for that.

I forgot to mention as well that ultimately  a set of Neutral Density Graduated filters should be used in high contrast images.

Thanks to each of you for your very comprehensive advice. I discovered the tone control in the shooting menu yesterday but haven't had a chance to fully review my shots yet. I'll be taking on board everything you said and hopefully in the not too distant future will be posting some pic's worthy of the site.

Today I am sixty so this might not be a day for too much concentration!

Happy birthday, Peter. I think that evening with the camera in one hand, the manual in another and a beer in the third (what can I say... that extra arm comes in handy sometimes) is a job for another day.

Yes, I forgot the ND grad thing too. Oops!