ygelman Loc: new -- North of Poughkeepsie!

I just read these two tips at
http://digital-photography-school.com/103-things-ive-learned-about-street-photography#ixzz2emf6vCJI
by Eric Kim.

"17. When shooting film, it is better to over expose than underexpose (film has more details in the highlights)."

"18. When shooting digital, it is better to underexpose than overexpose (digital has more details in the shadows)."

This surprises me. What do others have to say about this difference between film and digital???
-yoram

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

You will note that this is from a "Guest Contributor" who is offering a few reasonable tips, but these two are grossly oversimplified and misleading.

In general, it is better to correctly expose either film or digital. There is no one-size-fits-all. There may be situations where you might slightly overexpose or underexpose an image, film or digital, if you know (not guess) it will improve the image.

You are not exposing for details in either the shadows or the highlights. What you want in either is some texture, tonality and a hint that there may be detail there. The details you really want are in the mid-tones, not in the clouds or under the bushes.

When you overexpose film, especially slide film, you risk loosing information in the shadows. To lump both positive and negative film into the same statement shows that the author was not thinking of both.

If you underexpose digital to escape its tendency to block up the highlights, you risk getting more noise in the shadows.

ygelman Loc: new -- North of Poughkeepsie!

"17. When shooting film, it is better to over expose than underexpose (film has more details in the highlights)."
"18. When shooting digital, it is better to underexpose than overexpose (digital has more details in the shadows)."


To some extent you are missing the point of my question. I asked about the difference between film and digital when choosing to under/over expose them.

(Also "texture and tonality" is what is usually meant by "details", and some photographers generally shoot one way or the other -- as has been discussed in UUH before.)

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

What I can tell you for certain, is that the statement that digital has more detail in the shadows is incorrect or at the very least it is misleading. A digital file has more data in the brighter pixels than the darker. This is known fact - not my opinion.

Now, that does not mean you OVEREXPOSE as in blowing out the highlights. It does mean that biasing your histogram to the right will yield better image and if you do shoot raw, you can even recover some highlights that would have been lost in a jpg.

So #18 is wrong. The guy offers lots of good tips - 98% of which have been around forever and are hardly original, but #18 is still wrong.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

I think I got the point of your question. Maybe my answer was not clear.

I missed the "By Street Photographer Eric Kim" in the second heading. He has clearly spent a lot of time doing street photography (some digital and negatve film, probably little positive film) and has some good ideas, no doubt after a lot of introspection and self critique. It seems that all but the two items you picked from the 103 in his list are the only ones about exposure, the rest are about technique, composition and subject mater.

Unlike landscape or portrait photography, street photography is less about detail and more about composition and subject selection, and area in which Eric clearly has something to tell us.

When you overexpose or underexpose either digital or film you are sacrificing detail or information at one end of the exposure curve or at the other. There is no reason to do this consistently for either medium. If you do it you should do it selectively based on the subject mater, not based on the medium.

There are differences in the way that film and digital render detail that have nothing to do with most of what Eric is addressing. For the two points you selected, he is simply not correct.