Dynamic,
I think that you are being a bit dogmatic and overbearing. As you should know, Andrew is an expert in digital imaging and color management and his views should not be dismissed lightly.
You seem to be using the definition of overexposure for negative film. With digital, the situation is somewhat different as summarized by Bruce Fraser in another post on the Adobe Forums involving exposure to the right:
"For the purposes of this discussion, 'overexposure' means blowing highlights you didn't want to blow, and "correct exposure" means holding exactly the highlight detail you wanted to keep. In terms of what the camera meter tells you, that may well translate to systematic overexposure, but that's because the meter isn't well-suited to digital because it's calibrated to 12% reflectance, which is all the way down at the 12% level in a linear capture."
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bbb579c/65
One could define proper exposure as that exposure that optimizes capture information. For Ansel Adams and negative film, that involved exposing for the shadows. For digital capture, it involves exposing for the highlights. The nominal meter reading of the overall scene does not define proper expsure.
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I'm well aware of who Andrew is. If I'm not mistaken, he was asking a question and I was answering it. On that note, I'm not being dogmatic or overbearing. I'm simply stating what I know to work.
I have nothing to argue with Mr Fraser's quote -he's absolutely correct, as are you in your last paragraph there- but our discussion is not the one he was in. For the purpose of
this discussion I am stating that over-exposure is where tones appear too bright, were 18% grey is lighter than 18% grey, were colors appear washed out, etc. Since this discussion has included post processing and not just capture, I'm referring to correct exposure as the final appearance of the image; what you'll take to print.
Just as you stated, "In ETTR, the image might be too light without exposure adjustment in the raw converter." I'm saying the same thing.
Thanks however, I'm still trying to ensure that all this expose to the right, use the white tile stuff is working and makes scenes to me and others. I'm in the same boat with the rest of you <g>.
If there were a way to photograph an object and objectively evaluate that I was placing the most bits in the last stop (and I'd have to recognize real data from noise), that would be useful.
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People are a good subject to test ETTR on. Have someone hold the white balance tool and make sure there some items or clothing that are dark toned and that there are some shadowed areas that will still relay some detail. Bracket photograph them and then see what appears the best.
I'm fairly confident that you'll see that a exposure in that test resulting in the whites being 250 the person will appear washed out and when corrected to 240, the person will appear as they should. You should also see a reduction of noise in the darker areas of the ETTR shots and sometimes -depending on the lens, camera resolution, photographic technique, etc- you might see some added sharpness in mid-tones to highlights.