why care about blown highlights?

It is lost information. Once it's blown, it is unrecoverable. You can always use Photoshop Curves or something else to increase the contrast and clip the image. But if it is blown, you lose that part of the image. Same with loss of shadow detail.

Film handles shadow detail and highlights differently than digital- it is non-linear, and has "Tails". Digital analog to digital converters are linear. You can make A/D's non-linear, maybe it is time to do so.
 
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This thing of worrying about blown highlights gets me thinking that an image with interesting or intriguing subject matter is a good image, regardless of the technical merits of the tonality, or focus, or DOF (gawd, let's not get started on THAT).

If we judge the historic archives of famous photographs based purely on contemporary technical merits, I suspect few would pass muster. I'd like to think, however, that they still remain great images, regardless.

I think this has become a litmus test for my personal photography, where I can throw out a low of technically accurate images because they lack the spirit of a great photograph. They may be sharp, well-focused, principle objects placed neatly according to the rule of thirds, but lack interest.

Someone named Ansel once said something about sharp images of fuzzy concepts, which I think applies to a lot of the junk that I produce. I'd give up all of it for a few blurry images of great subject matter. Even with blown highlights.

~Joe
 
I only really think of blown highlights with digital, where I look at them and see holes in my picture. I hate it. It doesn't happen the same with film, doesn't bug me.
 
There's also the transition to blown highlights that can be considered. Highlights are often blown in film images/prints, but in my opinion the transition is more gradual and graceful which makes it more palatable. For my tastes at least.
 
I don't like blown highlights on skin, especially the face. In general, I prefer loss of shadow detail to blown highlights. I suspect that years of Canon digital, especially trying to master their TTL flash system gave me highlight phobia. I seem to have fewer blown highlights when using film. The phobia was originally tied to keeping detail in a woman's wedding dress.
 
It's not so much the highlight itself -- it's the transition into it, the area around the highlight. In film, the transition is nice and smooth, with no clear "edge". In digital: a nasty business. Clunk! You've hit 255.
 
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