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Should you underexpose your photos on purpose?

by 43 Comments

Sometimes our photos end up being underexposed by accident, or because of poor lighting conditions. But what about doing it on purpose? Photographer Manny Ortiz admits he tends to underexpose his photos for one or two stops. In this video, he talks about why he does it and about the benefits of this approach.

Since Manny shoots mainly portraits, he uses this technique in portrait photography. Also, it’s useful when he works in natural light. When the lighting is tricky, you should follow the general rule to expose for the highlights in order to keep them intact. For example, when there are bright highlights in the background, Manny tends to underexpose one to two stops to prevent them from getting blown out. This gives him more flexibility when editing photos. Also, it provides him with more options for editing.

Keep in mind that the final result of post-processing depends on your camera’s dynamic range. Not every camera provides you with the same amount of shadow recovery. But still, as Manny points out, it’s also easier to recover shadows than it is to recover highlights.

Of course, you don’t have to do it for every single photo you make. It’s important to know your gear and what it’s capable of doing, so you know how far you can go with recovering the shadows in post. Also, know the light and what you can do with it.

[Should you UNDEREXPOSE your photos PURPOSELY? | Manny Ortiz]

Related posts:

Turn your bathroom into a natural light softbox for amazing portraits See the pros and cons of using natural light and off camera flash outdoors Make the most of natural light in a small in-home studio These are five DONT’S in portrait photography

  • With negative film it was common practice to slightly over-expose film 1/3 to 2/3 stops as it gave better negatives.

    • realllynotfred

      Yes, and underexpose slide film for the same reason. I use -0.7 stops on my DSLR.

    • …And nowadays we call this method ETTR (exposure to the right). Very useful to reduce digital noise, when it is possible.

    • Because film are not linear, over expose push the image out of non linear part of curve.

  • Conny, your topic 😉

  • Underexpose with digital was a very stupid things.

    • Digital Cameras have more Information in the shadows than in the highlights. Thats proven. So if you want to get the most dynamic range out of a photo, a slight underexposure is good for it.

      • Bit depth goes in the opposite direction…

        Highlights do have the most tonal information, but once the channels are clipped that’s it, then there’s no information at all, it’s just white.

        Ortiz is trying to balance that by avoiding clipping, sacrificing some tonal information in the shadows and mids in order to make sure he isn’t loosing tonal information to clipped highlights.

    • Floh, can you prove that?

    • Sure !

    • Paul Santek That´s common sense of Physics… the more light information you get, the more it turns to white (RGB), try it out yourself with your camera: take a shot 6 stopes overexposed and underexposed and you will see that you won´t be able to restore highlights but there will definiatly be informations in the shadows

    • Floh Poschenrieder man NO, it’s mathematics DAC use few bits of information for lower analog input.

    • Also this only applies to Native ISO ranges of the camera, if you pull up the ISO the dynamic range will get less, so this won´t work as good

    • Let’s stay inside the usable range of dynamics:
      Let’s imagine a black and white histogram with 256 steps, the higher half is one stop (127 steps), the quarter below that stop (the right half of the lower half) is one stop (64 steps), the next 1/8th to the right is one stop (32 steps) – where is there more information? if you brighten that up you’ll transform 16 or less shades into 127… hello banding…

    • Also here is a test with Cinematic Cameras that show the same pricipal as on photocameras: https://www.cinema5d.com/canon-c300-mark-ii-review-dynamic-range/

    • Michele M. Ferrario you have 12 bit that cover in linear mode from dark to to full light. With first 8 bit you have only 256 value

    • And if you want the technical explanation… here is a Script from Canon that shows the Signal differences in Shadow and Highlight detail : http://learn.usa.canon.com/app/pdfs/white_papers/Deep-Dive-HDR-Part1.pdf

    • Where is it stated in that Canon paper that there is more detail in the shadow?

    • Thats also why special low light cameras like die Sony A7S have a base ISO of 3200 or 1600 to get more details out of the Shadows for a Flat Gamma profile to restore better hightlights

    • let’s take a 16bit file, 15 stops of dynamic range:
      the darkest stop has 4 shades, the next brighter one 8, the next 16, ….. the brightest one has 32768 shades of each color…
      even if I underexpose by one stop, I’ll get 16384 shades instead of 32768 when exposed to the right…

    • Floh Poschenrieder the problem is not “have” information but “how much information in low light”. As I said shadow have few values than high light. It’s mathematics, and nobody can do anything. Editing low light image bring to banding.

    • In my tests with underexposed files worked better in postproduction as I overexpose…

    • Of course the Value is mathematicly less in bit range but adc in the camera not interpret it otherwise

    • Michele M. Ferrario of course there will be banding but there still be Information… And as I tried in my own raws with many files it worked with underexposing

    • Josef Geisselhart I think the lightrays with all Informations are not influenced by the bitdepth right

    • Floh Poschenrieder Not at all, every camera sensor takes the light as it comes and, mathematically, runs a Fourier transformation on it to determine how much red, green, and blue light it is composed of, since that’s the only thing the light diodes the sensor is made of can register. When you over expose, you are adding noise to the signal, thus losing information, e.g. picture details. However, the bitrate only determines how your device processes the raw image to a compressed file. In this case you could indeed lose information…

    • digital sensors are linear. There is far more information in the light, not the dark,.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposing_to_the_right

    • “”Whilst you might think that each of the seven stops in the range of the sensor record an even number of tones throughout the dynamic range, you would be mistaken. F-stops are logarithmic in nature meaning that each stop records half of the light of the previous one. Practically, this means that the brightest stop records half of the possible number of tones, i.e. 2048, the second stop records half again, i.e. 1024, and so on until the seventh stop that records only 32 tonal levels. Therefore, if you underexpose an image and correct the exposure during in post processing, the tonal transitions in the darker areas will not be as smooth, and the risk of degrading your image quality is much higher. If you overexpose your image, by pushing the histogram to the right, you will capture much more tonal information that results in much better image quality when correcting the exposure in post processing.

    • All sensors are dialed in to record the best information when exposure is neither under or over. The only reason to ever deviate from this is if you want more information in either end. For example clipped highlights, or shadows with poor detail quality.

  • I follow Joe McNally and David Hobby and underexpose by one stop. If you under expose something, it can be brought back, if you over expose, you can’t get blown highlights back as easily.

    • Then you are also degrading all your shots, only because you want to be able to save images where you messed up. It’s very backwards thinking imo.

    • Conny Wallstrom So tell that to two of the best and well known in the industry. I don’t mess up because I know about exposure and how to control it, it goes hand in hand with shooting film since I was 5 Years old. And it’s not about saving an image, it’s about not overexposing the image in the first place.

  • Manny Ortiz

  • Yes.

  • Yes

  • Jan-Uwe Reichert

    I thought in digital it should be : ETTR (Expose to the right), because more information are stored in the right of the histogram.

  • Adwb

    all he is doing is ETTR , just slightly overdoing it, something I have done for years for location work, also best practice with extra lights for location work as well

  • Jurgen Lobert

    Another example where the headline is very misleading, you guys need to do a better job at editing. Underexposing the main portion to accommodate highlights is a very common practice, I do this all the time at night. You expose for the highlights and then pull out the shadows in post processing. This works well in many cameras but not all and it has less to do with the dynamic range than with ISO invariance (one of the main advantages of Nikon & Sony over Canon). Either way, in the end this is not really underexposing, it is still ETTR, except that we consider the few bright highlights, instead of letting them blow out (a common amateur mistake).

    However, using this as a general rule is very bad advise, as underexposing by only one stop loses you half of your dynamic range values! That is what the title suggests….

  • Jim Mlodynia

    A tip that I got for shooting birds such as Egrets is to under expose the shot depending on the light to save the detail in the feathers of the bird, for years most of the details of these birds were washed out until I took the advice from Outdoor photographer.

  • Renlish

    Yup… I underexpose slightly on a regular basis. I found it works best for my style and the way I work in post. I find it easier to pull details out of shadow than out of highlights. Am I wrong? I don’t care – it works for me. You do you, Boo.

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