Which photo Can survive? Over or Under-exposed photo?

ProfHankD wrote:

petrochemist wrote:

In digital photography once data is lost by overexposure clipping there is no-way to regain that data. But if the parts concerned have no information of interest this doesn't matter.

Under exposed digital images (especially if recorded in RAW) can have a lot of information pulled out of underexposed areas.

With film it depends on the type of film. IIRC a fair bit can be done to recover highlights from over-exposed negatives & less from under-exposed ones. Slides are generally better slightly under-exposed if you can't get the exposure right. If the exposure issues are known about before processing the film a considerable degree of adjustment can be done by over or under developing as required. Some films were routinely 'pushed' by 5 stops in astrophotography.

Just to add, I've recently been very surprised at just how much image content can be recovered from grossly underexposed color slides.

Although there often appears to be no visible image content at all, HDR (high dynamic range) imaging of slides was able to recover image data that was 10 or more stops underexposed! Not saying this always works, but that it ever works is shocking.

Yes, there's more there than you can see on a lightbox.

Even the simple 3-exposure HDR feature built into Sony cameras shows some detail in very dark shadows; I advise using it for routine digitizing of slides.