Overexpose digital and get a better picture?#$%!?

I read an interesting article on digital CCD sensors and how they perform in a linear manner compared to film and the human eye. To our perception and to how RAW data is converted by the mathmatical algorithim there is more detail information in the highlights then the shadows. That's why you can usually darken a photo without much loss of quality rather than lighten a photo and get noise.

Therefore to be on the safe side with RAW only picture taking you can actually slightly overexpose your shots allowing you to have less noise and more detail in your shadows and still not degrade the detail in your highlights. Not HDR, but more dynamic range than if you just took a single regular exposure shot. I found it interesting and have actually seen the proof going back to some old shots that I converted from RAW.

It seems you never want to increase exposure during RAW conversion if you can help it and decreasing exposure doesn't harm the end result if not excessive.

Just thought it interesting to mention. Maybe I stating something that everyone already knew. I've know that digital always has suffered in shadow detail and noise before reading this, but never new the real reason.

As long as you don't blow out individual color channels.

I try to use this technique almost allways..

My aim is not "perfect exposure" but to get the histogram a little further to the right without blowing highlights.

I'm glad that someone else has noticed this too. I have been using this method but hesitated to post it because it didnt seem right.

How are you guys accomplishing the slight overexposure? Are you dialing in compensation? If so how much?

Jeff, have you heard of the practice "expose to the right"? That merely means to increase the exposure as much as you can without clipping off hightlights, even if the camera fundamentally wants to give less exposure. That practice is merely alloting more of the linear digital 'bins' to capturing detail at the lower end of the brightness range, then using RAW adjustment to restore them to the appropriate brightness levels in final printing, but capturing more detail in that reproduction by doing so. But one must not let highlight detail be clipped off and lost!!!

Compensating by bumping up the EV value works. If you're in Av, Tv, or Manual, you can also just bump one those up by X as easily. It's a good idea to test with your camera to see how over-exposed you can go without losing a channel. As I understand, It can be hard to judge where to expose-right just from the in-camera histogram, since those values are calculated from the jpeg data, not the raw data.

Yeah, that was the whole point of the article I was reading. I just hadn't heard it mentioned here and thought it would be good message to get out. I didn't know all the hows and whys either. It was very interesting. I kinda been doing it without knowing, because there were times when I wanted to reduce noise in my shadows and I found that this technique worked for that too.

Overexpose and underdevelop has been a tried and true technique in film photography for as long as I can remember. It only makes sense that it would also be true in digital photography.

<<Overexpose and underdevelop has been a tried and true technique in film photography for as long as I can remember.>>

But that axiom applied to black & white film, not to color slides! And digital is closer to color slides in how it should be treated.

Luminous Landscape has an oft-referenced article on the subject that's quite good.

it's a good, solid technique. however in practice it's difficult, depending on your subject. for example i was at a baseball game recently and if i exposed to the right, i blew out the pin stripes in the white uniforms.

if i take a photo in the woods on the otherhand, where the histogram would be mostly in the center, that's when i use ettr and then pull the exposure down (shadows, levels or whatever post processing program you use) to get the good tones in the shadows etc.

perhaps a better way to say this is, in scenes with lower overall contrast is a good place to practice ettr. if scenes have important detail in highlight areas (pin stripes in uniforms on a bright day), then it gets tricky.

This is one of the key differences between digital and film. It does seem counter intuitive, but it is true. The histogram shows you what you have, and if you expose to the right you will be in good shape.

But that axiom applied to black & white film, not to color slides! And digital is closer to color slides in how it should be treated.

That's what you, or I, or anyone would naturally think, but it appears that the development process in digital photography has more in common with b&w negative film and the final print than with color reversal film.

Weird, huh?

If you overexpose B&W film and then underdevelop, you still have silver grains in the overexposed highlight area...in fact, if you didn't underdevelop there would be too many silver grains! And color neg is similar in its tolerance to overexposure, even without developing adjustments!

But if you overexpose digital image, the highlight area loses all detail, and no amount of PP or RAW editing will recover that lost detail!

And if you overexpose color slide, the highlight area loses all detail, and if (and only if) you have a pro lab that can do pull processing you might not have lost quite as much detai, but some will have been lostl!

Digital is less similar to color slide in being able to deal with a wide dynamic range. b But you have to play games, like compositing the frame adjusted for shadows with the same frame adjusted for hightlights.

<< it appears that the development process in digital photography has more in common with b&w negative film and the final print than with color reversal film>>

Please explain why you think this way, because (as I explained above) I don't immediately agree!