Over expose/Under expose

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PMK

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I know it is not preferable, but, when you get home after a day out with your camera and some of the best captures are ruined by the lighting; either the images are over exposed or under exposed - which do you believe is the easiest to sort out in post?
 
Probably underexposed.... Brightening up can introduce horrible noise, but you can do something to try and get rid of this. If you've blown the sky or similar, there's no detail there that can be recovered. Just the way I see it though!

Chris
 
PMK said:
I know it is not preferable, but, when you get home after a day out with your camera and some of the best captures are ruined by the lighting; either the images are over exposed or under exposed - which do you believe is the easiest to sort out in post?
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Almost certainly under. On an over exposed image the whites are always too hot to tone down (255 255 255). As an experiment, try taking a pic over exposing certain areas then try turnng the exposure down in RAW = no luck.

With under exposures you can always bring out details in shadows and make images brighter without damaging (to an extent).
 
are you shooting Raw? i would agree with above, under generates noise of course, but can be lifted. The recovery in raw doesnt half work well with highlights, but only to a certain degree.
 
I shoot both RAW and jpeg.

Thanks for the advice. I blew the sky on a few images over the weekend and couldn't tell until I got home (sun was so bright couldn't really make out my lcd screen). Was really difficult to save them!
 
In my short life of SLR photography, underexposing has been easier to fix so far, though noise can be annoying sometimes.

why not use bracketing to minimize the impact of under/over exposing? I think it saves the day when you can't tell if you are under/over exposing or not. One of the 3 shots is bound to be properly exposed or very close to it....
 
Jamieconverge said:
you cant really judge images on the lcd screen (or, you shouldnt). a great tip is to look at the histogram and blinkies on your camera at the time of shooting. makes blowing highlights a much rarer thing.
Click to expand...

Fully agree. I'd happily have the whole screen over to the histogram and no image showing...
 
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