August 11th, 2011, 04:18 PM
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In a nutshell, Expose To The Right (ETTR) applies to shots where you don't need the full dynamic range of the sensor AND you're shooting RAW AND you're going to post-process. The specifics can be found in several articles on the Luminous Landscape site, which explains the differences between how the human eye registers light vs. a sensor. I'll provide a quick and dirty description below. If you really want to understand it, read up on it on LL.
In a nutshell, if a camera sensor can cover 10 stops of brightness, there's a LOT more information recorded by the sensor at the higher stops than at the lower ones (read the LL articles to understand why). Therefore, to capture the most detail, you should use the highest exposure you can without clipping the highlights. Images shot this way can look horrible if they're not post-processed, appearing overexposed and flat.
However, taking a shot exposed in this manner and then adjusting it "back down" in your photo processing software, will restore the proper overall brightness level. So then what's the point? The resulting image will contain a lot more fine detail in the darker portions than if you'd shot it "normally exposed" in the first place.
Michael Reichman has suggested that makers of cameras that use the sensor itself as the light meter (e.g. micro 4/3rds cameras) should have the camera automatically ETTR and then set a compensation value that will shift the image back to "normal" once the data has been read off the sensor. That would allow all users to get the benefit of this technique without having to override the camera's auto-metering and applying adjustments manually in post-processing.
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