To ETTR or Not ETTR?

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether or not it makes sense to expose to the right. Certainly, if you’re shooting in dim light and need to raise the ISO, it makes little sense to expose to the right, since ETTR works best at native ISO. But if you are shooting at native ISO, your clips will have less noise, greater dynamic range and shallower depth of field if you follow ETTR principles. I tend to be a little cautious if the brightest highlights in the image happen to be the subject’s face. The following are a couple of screen grabs shot ever so slightly ETTR with highlights, midtones and shadows pulled down a bit in post.