[markbarendt]

I'm just challenging the notion giving less exposure than one normally would, improves anything. If anything it puts more of the subject into the part of the curve that is compressed.

My scientific wild ass guess is that in a situation where there is a bunch of flare in a given shot for whatever reason, there is a sweet spot somewhere; but we are between a rock and a hard spot.

On one side we have the toe that will compress important tones if we let placement fall too low, on the other when we add exposure excessive flare adds more and more generalized exposure that flattens the toe and reduces the the overall contrast of the image especially in the low tones.

For me, given my metering and shooting techniques, I normally have enough latitude to reduce my exposure by a stop in almost any situation without losing important detail. In a high flare situation I could give that latitude away to get better overall contrast. I peg my shots to the middle somewhere and very much live by what Stephan expresses here.

Attachment 63292

This shows the density ranges of negatives, that were judged to produce prints with excellent print quality, superimposed over the paper curve which they were printed on. Notice the diversity of NDRs. They all produced great prints. How precise does anyone actually have to be? Could this be the reason why good images are made regardless of the approach? The way I see it. Aim for the center. Even with all the potential variables and variances, you'll still hit the target.

Your system may not have the same latitude. That's not a detriment, it just means that you may already be at the sweet spot I might move to, to minimize flare.