Over or under exposed photo's

Is it better in a shooting situation to have your photo's a little over exposed and correct in pp or unders and lighten in pp. I ask this because i had a situation last night where I could not get the light right with out flash and ended up a little uex.. but the weekend end i ended up oex and i notice in correcting them the outcomes are different. which work better when it comes to quality in you guys opinion.

Thnx

It has been my understanding that it is better to underexpose. Over-exposing can lead to blown highlights and loss of detail which cannot be recovered. If you are underexposed, then typically the detail is still there and can be recovered in PP. Of course, I am no expert and this is a general observation and there are situations where I purposely over-expose my images.......

shoot RAW and always shoot to the right (overexposing by a tad). an underexposed picture will generally yield more noise -- even at low ISOs. a properly exposed high-ISO pic, has little or no discernable noise.

IMO I would rather be a tad over-exposed to see faces and eyes under helmets and hats, but not too far to the right with a ton of clipping.

I would agree with the over exposed side. Under exposing and then brightening will add more noise. Noise hides in the dark recesses of your photo.

For print, it is necessary for there to be a lot of detail in the mid-tones, and that can mean having to bump them about 1.25-1.5 in photoshop, which will yield a tonne of noise, so when Im out shooting, I make sure I overexpose with the in camera meter, as it is pretty inaccurate. You lose about a stop of light, maybe two when your images are printed on newsprint!

When I shoot surfing, I always underexpose by half a stop to avoid blowing out the white water, as this confuses the meter.

Thereafter, I correct in CS2

It is better to overexpose slightly than underexpose - check out the final note on Sports Illustrated's page of recommended settings for their photographers (this is the Mark II N page):

http://www.siphoto.com​/?canon1DM2N.inc

Over. While you can bring the detail back in underexposed images they will be full of noise.