Noisereduction by shooting to the right and adjusting?

[Big Mike]

My 2 cents: the "overexpose and adjust in post" is a hold over from the days of film when adjusting your iso wasn't as easy.

Not at all.

As Garbz mentioned, in a digital photo, there is simply more information in the highlights than there is in the shadows. More information doesn't necessarily make your photo better...but it makes a better base for your digital photo editing.

Have a look at the article I linked to above. It comes from the Author's talk with Tomas Knoll (the first name in the long list of programmers/authors of a little program called Photoshop)

Expose Right

 

[Garbz]

djacobox372 you do have a point to a certain degree. If you clip your highlights that detail is lost. But not every scene has a high contrast. For instance taking photos of diffuse subjects where their source of illumination is not in the frame would rarely use the full dynamic range of the sensor. Or taking photos of storm clouds.

 

[FrankLamont]

Interesting ideas, here.

I'm leaning towards Garbz's ideas here, which is pretty much what my train of thought was initially as well.

Overexposed areas will have less noise than darker areas in an image. Reducing it is, I would think in theory, a way to bypass the problem with the photodiodes initially, but... whether it is efficient or not enough to lose than extra 1/2 stops (and hence shutter speed) is a questionable thing.

 

[djacobox372]

My 2 cents: the "overexpose and adjust in post" is a hold over from the days of film when adjusting your iso wasn't as easy.

Not at all.

As Garbz mentioned, in a digital photo, there is simply more information in the highlights than there is in the shadows. More information doesn't necessarily make your photo better...but it makes a better base for your digital photo editing.

Have a look at the article I linked to above. It comes from the Author's talk with Tomas Knoll (the first name in the long list of programmers/authors of a little program called Photoshop)

Expose Right

Okay, I can see the point of that in special circumstances: when the image to be captured is low-contrast with no highlights, and you can't lower the iso anymore.

However with modern digital <200iso is so detailed and noiseless, it's hard for me to imagine much noticable improvement unless your final image is meant to be extremely dark.