Digital Exposure_Exposing to the Right

This is a topic that I've read a number of articles, and segments in books about.....of course there are a lot of opinions about it.
I was wondering if any photographers on this forum use the strategy of 'exposing the right' to push their digital sensor's Dynamic Range to the fullest?

On occasion, I give it a try, with fairly decent results. From proper exposure, I over expose to push the pixels as far up the histogram without blowing out detail in the highlights. Some scenes obviously have less pushing to give than other. I shoot RAW, so when I bring the RAW in, I immediately slide the Brightness back down in Lightroom. The greatest advantage I've found is in eliminating as much noise as possible. I do have to watch the fringing and CA sometimes.

Does anybody else do this frequently? Occasionally?

I don't intentionally overexpose just to push the histogram to the right. The appearance of the histogram depends on the subject and lighting conditions. If I'm shooting a bright scene with alot of non-specular highlights I'll expose as far to the right as necessary for that particular scene stopping short of clipping the highlites. If I'm shooting an average scene without any bright highlites on an overcast day, for example, I'll often expose for the middle of the histogram. If I have a dark toned subject I'll expose to the left of the histogram. Basically I just try to expose for the subject as I used to do with film. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems to work for me....I always shoot RAW and at the lowest ISO that I can.

One thing I did read in OP is to set your camera's tone compensation to low contrast (I shoot a Nikon) which supposedly gives a more accurate rendition on the camera's LCD of when you might be clipping your highlites. Can't tell you if it makes much difference whether you do this or not.

I try and shoot to the right most of the time, it's definitely where the most information is collected on todays sensors.

Eric and Mark:
Yes, what Eric is suggesting is what I was referring to. The fact that over 1/2 of the digital sensor's available tonal values (like 2049 or something total) live in the highlights and lights parts of the histogram.
So I was referring to the strategy of utilizing these areas of the sensor to capture more detail, and ultimately more dynamic range. From what I've seen the strategy definitely works, but just wondering if anybody uses it, or has abandoned it from their workflow for some reason.

I personally have never even bothered trying to shoot right. Largely because I tend to gravitate towards high contrast scenes, and shooting to the right leads to easily and all-too-often blown out highlights, and I would rather have controlled highlights and a balanced image than an extra 1/2 stop of DR. I've yet to make an exposure where I've discernibly noticed that I could have used that extra latitude, so to me it seems like technical over-analyzation more than anything else.

I don't particularly try to get everything to the right, but I do try not to have too much on the left, if that makes sense. Since I know there isn't as much information on the left, I try not to have things bunched up there. If I have a nice balance accross the histogram and no blacks clipped, I don't worry about it too much. Depending on the scene I may bracket towards the right sometimes. It may be a little technical over-analyzation, but the geeky side of me likes that.

I have read that the new D3 that Nikon announced has amazing Dynamic range. A pro photographer that shoots the 1DSMKII says the D3 blows it away with amazing dynamic range. He had a chance to use it for a day and said Canon has some work to do. Time will tell. I always bracket if the scene warrants it. That way I have a choice of which image to use.

Here is an excellent article on "exposing to the right":

Exposing to the Right

The above sage advice comes from some true icons of the industry. Use as you see fit...

It's all about available information.
Back in the old film days, John Shaw taught to expose for the highlights and let the darks fall where they may. Now, with digital, there is twice as much information in the right most quarter of the Histogram as there is in the next one to the left. That one in turn has twice as much information as the one to its left, on and on...
The individual RGB histograms will show you if you're losing information in those channels. If your general Histogram looks good but you're blowing out the i.e. red channel, and if you're shooting yellow balsamroot at Rowena in the spring or red sandstone in the SW, then you are losing detail in the red/yellows of your photograph.
That's all fine and dandy if you're photographing to impress your friends over the Internet but if you plan to print and enlarge your photos, you're leaving money on the table with that lost information.
Additionally, you can make lights dark without losing detail, but in making darks light, you will be introducing noise into your photo. Better to expose correctly than to muck around with Noise programs, dodging and burning.
The totally, correctly exposed photo may look like crap in your camera's LCD, but fear not, when you get home and load it into Photoshop and start working it, you'll be glad you took the time to "expose to the right" in all the individual channels".
When I'm out there, really trying to create art, I'm using all the tools as well as I can. I've taken many, many shots of the same thing, checked the RGB histograms, adjusted and shot again to give myself every advantage when I get back home to recreate the art I saw in the field.

I'm still wrapping my head around this discussion - if I understand it (and Rick's linked article) correctly, this technique is to push exposures as far to the bright end of the spectrum as possible, without blowing highlights. This is not only the opposite of what I do now (I tend to shoot three bracketed images, starting at the "correct" exposure, then two darker versions by 0.3 stop intervals), it's also opposite what my old-school film mentality tells me to do. The credo with film was to never overexpose, since you could never pull image detail from completely burned areas. So again, I'm still wrapping my head around this..!

-Tom

Tom,
Certainly don't blow out the highlights but you're hosing yourself if you think that you can recover detail from the dark areas without introducing noise. Expose right to the edge of blown out in all three of the RGB channels and let me tell you, you'll be buying me a six of Dead Guy in thanks next time you see me when you see your photo quality.

Well, I think I might be doing that for the most part - mostly because almost everything I shoot has a cloud, snow or waterfall in it. So I start my bracketing just below blowing out the white areas (though I need to check the RGB channels to see where I am on each). Normally, this puts me right on the "correct" exposure for the brightest exposure, and below that for bracketed versions. I guess I need to experiment with this a bit..!

Tom

Mark ya said it VERY well!!! And Tom I too came from the "Old School" of film so I understand your conundrum. Always try to get as close to bright white without blowing out the highlights. What I typically do is in that far right band on the histogram (there are typically 5 bands on a histogram) I try to get the last bit of histogram to be in the last third of that far right band - for each channel and/or the hottest channel.

All I can say to the folks who are still wonderin what all this is about is go TRY IT. And see how much BETTER your darker areas of your images suddenly appear.