Depending on the capabilities of your camera, where you're shooting, and how you want the final image to look, you sometimes should consider underexposing a portrait slightly. This great video examines the benefits of underexposing a portrait and when you should think about trying it.
Coming to you from Manny Ortiz, this helpful video talks about the benefits of underexposing portraits. The idea is essentially that if you're shooting outside, the sky is often brighter than the subject, and if you expose for the subject, you'll sometimes end up blowing out the sky, and with digital sensors, there tends to be much more recovery latitude in the shadows than in the highlights. Of course, if you're shooting with strobes, you can light your subject and expose for the ambient and strobe in a way that balances the two, but if you're shooting natural light, depending on your camera's shadow recovery abilities and the difference in luminosity between the subject and the sky (if it's too big, you'll have issues boosting the exposure on your subject that much in post), you may want to consider this technique. It's certainly not something you should do all the time, and it really depends on the final look you're going for (for example, if you want that light, airy look, this isn't the way to shoot), but it can be very helpful in specific situations.
TL;DR:
Film: Expose for shadows.
Digital: Expose for highlights.
For me it always seems like highlights get clipped easier than shadows. Not to say the shadows look great if you're pulling a stop or two out of them, but it's better than getting nothing from blown highlights.
Doesn't *always* work. you can preserve the highlights and still clip a channel.
For most natural backgrounds, that's unlikely.
For snow sculptures lit with colour lights, that has happened plenty of times and ruined my shots.
I was thinking about portraits where the red channel in a "hot" area gets clipped. I've seen something similar to your experience, in shots from an ice sculpture museum in Chena, Alaska. I'm not going back anytime soon to reshoot. ;-)
not for chrome film!
Ha. Well yeah then you're dealing with about 1/3 of a stop of latitude in either direction right? I was talking about color negative film.
Sorry all I saw was “film”.
Hasn't Dani Diamond been preaching this for sometime?
Still a good video however with some great shots!
You are right Terry. Dani Diamond is preaching this for long time. I really missed Dani's articles. Fstoppers should bring him back. His articles are original and full of information.
God, no they should not. All he wrote was click bait instagram crap
I like to ETTR whenever possible. But there are times you underexpose for the reasons illustrated.
What is ETTR?
Exposure to the right: https://fstoppers.com/education/spaghetti-and-histograms-exposure-right-...
Underexposing the subject and ETTR are not mutually exclusive. In ETTR you go to the verge of clipping the highlights to maximize information. That can still leave you with an underexposed subject. Routinely underexposing the subject is a safe approach that leaves some room for error. Getting ETTR right in an outdoor portrait shoot is tough.
Bear in mind that some RAW formats offer lossy compression that will apply some lossy compression to the highlights, but lossless to shadow data (Nikon NEF, for example on lower-end and mid-range bodies). This technique favors those who use this specific setting as well.
I would have found it extremely useful if you had shown how you would have retouched the two images with the light background. By my eye, they were well within range to have given the model just a tad more exposure. Just another opinion. Overall, good video.
The suggested underexposure may work with Nikon or select camera sensors but I wouldn't recommend it for the Canon bodies I've used. My Canon files benefit from generous exposure in nearly all situations. I've shot in contrasty uneven light and carefully had to thread the needle with a mix of slight underexposure and slight overexposure so I could recover both in Photoshop.
tnks for share