>With subjects of modest contrast range, exposing to the right is probably not of much practical value:
on one hand, it will give more levels at each subject brightness level, and these extra gradations will then be preserved when one does compensating EC downwards in 16-bit mode,
Please explain how the extra gradations will be preserved when you do compensating EC downwards. There must be something I'm missing here.
> Perhaps comparing these two approaches in the field is preferable than endless attempts to anwer the question theoretically.
My observations here are based on comparing exposure approaches in the field and references to theory are only to understand what I saw in the field.
> is that image data to the right side of the histogram is of higher quality (less noise, defined by more bits) than image data to the left.
Less noise, yes, but higher quality overall? It depends. I actually do use this technique on occasion but it involves shots where I'm not pulling the shadows back down, only the highlights. But my 'motivation' in these cases is not to arbitrarily push data to the right but to expose for the shadows (taking care to not blow highlights) in split tonality situations. This means that later I can pull highlights down rather than pushing shadows up resulting in cleaner shadows. I'll post an example later.
- DL
