The "sorta" was that with film many photogs had handheld incident or spot meters to support their testing and field work....today we often need to rely on what the cameras give us....which is why I mentioned what I d and Kasson's work.
IF they used such equipment in the past, why wouldn’t they do so today? Exposure is exposure. The only differences I see are: 1. We have an LCD to look at, which in this context is
wrong. 2. We have linear encoded raw data which isn't like a JPEG or film which has a curve (film being H&D). So we treat this like a different kind of 'film' if you will.
With digital, I do not believe that an incident meter is key to optimizing exposure.
The same is true for film. The differences are that an incident meter is less fooled than a reflective meter in an inexperienced users's hands. If they point that reflective meter at a white dog on snow and take what it tells them as a fact for proper exposure, they are in for a rude awaking. Not the case with the incident meter. But which ever you use, you have to use the tools properly. And no meter is useful until we decide on the ISO and that means we also have to put the processing (development) into the mix.
Middle grey is interesting; the significant highlight is what is most important as we want to get that properly placed without clipping.
You can do this with either meter once you know how they behave and how your exposure and development behave.
This is why I use the camera spot meter and Kasson used other methods to arrive at a histogram which mimic the Raw.
And if you point that at the white dog and understand it will inform you how to end up with a gray dog, then adjust, all is fine.
On Lightroom, as you know, 2010 and 2012 PV are significantly different on highlight clipping. On 2012, a highlight above 96-97% will have at least one channel clipped and recovery applied. this is why RawDigger was needed to calibrate the 5D3 readings...
Yes but nothing brings back clipped data so you still need to figure out the limits here. In that context,
this part of the test is somewhat raw processing agnostic. If you blow out all data at plus 2 stops over what the meter recommends, nothing will bring that back. Yet I agree that you can't separate the development further on, so again, we have to test the process, just as we did with film. That means finding the proper ISO, along with proper metering and development.