1. A method to compensate for blooming of a shape of an ellipse in an image that has been generated by a digital video camera, comprising: sampling a plurality of pixels outside of the shape of the ellipse; determining a brightness of each of the sampled pixels; averaging the brightness of those sampled pixels; determining a semi-major axis of the ellipse; and compensating for blooming of the shape based on the difference between a brightness of the shape and the average brightness of the sampled pixels, wherein the compensating for blooming includes applying an empirical data mapping to adjust the semi-major axis based on the difference between the brightness of the shape and the average brightness of the sampled pixels.