Shoot Too Dark and Improve Image Quality

Not too long ago, I was reading a great blog entry from a seasoned pro (though somehow I cannot find it again to give him credit and a link), and a little something he mentioned which “they used to do in the old days” sounded just like a trick I use. Evidently, I am not the first person to come up with this idea, but at least it made me feel a little more normal.

Maybe you have the same problem I do. You do not have the Nikon D3 or the Canon 5D or some other full-frame, no-noise wonder, and moving your ISO up just a little turns your image into static. Do you want to keep image quality at its best (or pretty close) and stop sacrificing your pictures to the ISO noise gods? Here is what I do.

Before I give the tip, here is a good starter: buy fast glass. If you are on a budget, there are budget prime lenses out there that have pretty open apertures and can gain you a few stops of light over the cheap zooms.

So, you need to move that ISO 800 shot with its annoying noise back to an ISO 200, no noise shot? If your aperture is at its limit and you just cannot sacrifice the speed any more, just shoot the shot too dark. Exposure compensation is the answer (find it in your camera manual and figure out how to set it).

I know, it sounds backwards: “the shot it too dark so I am going to make it darker”, but it actually makes loads of sense. If you tell your camera it needs to meter minus two stops, then your speed can be two stops faster. Then, in post-production, you just bring the exposure back up. Sure, you get a little noise that way, but at least in my case, way less than if I had bumped up the ISO.

Disclaimer: if you shoot JPG, this trick is not really very helpful. Do yourself a favor; shoot raw. With raw, you easily have a couple stops to play with. I find (with my camera, anyway) that bringing a photo up three stops is just too much. That is when I would start to shoot 400, then compensate -2 on exposure, gaining three stops of light, total.

So, back to the nameless seasoned pro. He said they did not use light meters (they were not built in to the cameras, and no photojournalist had the time to be taking light readings for every shot). So, they would shoot 400 film, shoot it too dark, just guessing on the exposure. Then, when they developed the film (not making prints, just developing the film itself), they would leave it in the chemicals till it looked right. What I realized is that I am effectively doing a digital version of the same trick.

I knew I was not crazy.