Do I deliberately underexpose?
Q
Are there some occasions when it’s better to deliberately underexpose an image?
Hayley Mann
A
The whole debate of whether it’s better to underexpose to retain highlights but darken shadows or expose the highlights and therefore brighten the shadows has been raging for years. Neither practice is absolutely right or absolutely wrong.
The basic answer to your question Hayley is yes, deliberate underexposure can be a good way to ensure that all detail is captured, although of course some post-capture processing will be required to pull the detail out of the shadows.
I think it’s important that if you are going to deliberately underexpose and then brighten the image in software, you should have a few rules. Firstly, shoot raw. By shooting raw, rather than JPEG, you have much greater leeway when it comes to manipulation of the file.
I’d also suggest that it’s best to underexpose as little as possible, so make sure your exposure compensation increments are set to one-third so you can fine-tune the exposure you are dialling in. I also try to avoid too much underexposure when
I am shooting at high ISOs. This is simply because there will always be some noise evident in a high-ISO image and I don’t want to make this worse when trying to pull detail out of the shadows.
As a general rule, I expose to the right when shooting anything over ISO 1600 to avoid this issue, although it’s worth noting that with software such as Topaz Labs’ DeNoise, you can break this rule and with careful processing still get an excellent final photo.