Nikon D300 Complete Manual page 262

V1.02
I should also point out that individual color channels can be
blown out. This actually is the most difficult thing to learn
about digital exposures: your exposure may look correct, but
if an individual color channel is blown out (a value of 255,
4095, or 16383), this will come back to bite your butt later.
This is still true for those that shoot NEF. In particular, I've
learned the hard way that the red channel is prone to blow
out with red and near-red flower blossoms in bright light.
What happens then is that you lose any chance of
manipulating color after the fact without getting what I call
"nuclear colors" (see petal of rose in shot, below [taken from
a converter test in my newsletter]).
In my newsletter I pointed out that digital photographers need
to learn the colors that trigger channel blow out. Bright red,
bright green, and bright blue are easy to recognize, but learn
to recognize the colors produced by maximum Red+Green,
Red+Blue, and Blue+Green channels. See one of those six
colors in the brighter areas of your scene? Check the color
histograms to make sure you haven't blown out a channel
(see "Options for Evaluating Exposure" on page <263>). Just
so that you know which colors I'm talking about, here they
are:
Yes, those are old favorites: red, green, blue (the primary
colors picked up by the sensor) and yellow, magenta, and
cyan (the alternate colors on the color wheel). Of the six, I
Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D300 Page 262