? with a RAW file (lightening vs. darkening)

-lets say you missed your perfect exposure, would you rather be a little under or a little overexposed so when editing will keep IQ better than the other?
For image quality, will the image be better if it was underexposed and you have to bring up the exposure or overexposed and have to bring down the exposure?

Overexposed. Here's why: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial​s/expose-right.shtml

Overexposed RAW is always better, as long as it is not so overexposed that the highlights are clipped. As a matter of fact, there is a school of thought that advocates intentionally overexposing and then reducing brightness in the RAW converter. It is called Expose To The Right and was started about five years ago with this seminal article:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial​s/expose-right.shtml

LOL @ the great minds thinking alike!

If you overexpose a RAW file by more than a stop they're generally unrecoverable. With newer cameras and HTP turned on you can sometimes get away with two stops. Same goes for underexposure really - one stop you can get away with, two stops just or more the image quality is fairly poor.

At weddings I would generally rather slightly underexpose, because wedding dresses are massively reflective and while the faces are properly exposed the dress can be completely blown. I can bump the midtones of the skin easily enough, but recovering blown highlights is more difficult.

tim wrote in post #7815307
If you overexpose a RAW file by more than a stop they're generally unrecoverable. With newer cameras and HTP turned on you can sometimes get away with two stops. Same goes for underexposure really - one stop you can get away with, two stops just or more the image quality is fairly poor.

At weddings I would generally rather slightly underexpose, because wedding dresses are massively reflective and while the faces are properly exposed the dress can be completely blown. I can bump the midtones of the skin easily enough, but recovering blown highlights is more difficult.

I would add a qualifier that weddings in direct sunlight; otherwise in shade or indoors wedding dresses can be over exposed (1 stop maybe) and recovered with no problem. Any more than that and you're pushing it, and believe me brides notice when they see all of those (unsharp mask applied) details in the dress in the photo.

Anyway, expose to the right; it's not just a photographic artsy-fartsy myth, it's a mathematical fact

Direct sunlight is the worst, but the fabric that wedding dresses are made out of tends to be ultra reflective so even being outside in open shade they tend to blow out if they're reflecting the sky towards that camera. With dresses that fall straight down it's not as bad as the ones where the base is wider. Either way it's a consideration, you just have to use trial and error on the wedding day and keep an eye on the histogram. Sometimes you can't avoid blowing out the dress a little so you get a good exposure for the faces.

thanks for all the responses. appreciate it

tim wrote in post #7816218
Direct sunlight is the worst, but the fabric that wedding dresses are made out of tends to be ultra reflective so even being outside in open shade they tend to blow out if they're reflecting the sky towards that camera. With dresses that fall straight down it's not as bad as the ones where the base is wider. Either way it's a consideration, you just have to use trial and error on the wedding day and keep an eye on the histogram. Sometimes you can't avoid blowing out the dress a little so you get a good exposure for the faces.

...and brides hate it when they have spent a fortune on the wedding gown, but you overexposed it and blew the details out of it! Now that digital has RAW convertors with Fill function and other adjustment like Recover, you can save the details in the dress yet preserve the lower brightness areas, too.