Many years ago I belonged to a club that used judges who did not want titles on the competition entries. There are times where a snappy title might improve the photograph - a photograph that would otherwise fail on its own. An example I'll use actually occured ... the photo was of a woman wearing a bathing suit laying on the beach on her back. No big deal - a so/so image. The title was "Twin Peaks" (at a time when that show was all the rage). Suddenly everyone saw a wonderful photograph.
I have attached two images - one without a title and one with a title. Does the title change your opinion of the image?

What makes you think that we disagree? I don't have any problem with doing it the way that you describe. That's exactly what I would have done!

The way that we do it is based on a thorough understanding of the capabilities and limitations of raw capture.

I know that you could have gone 1/2 step further and placed the exposure in the middle of exposure zone VIII and it would probably have not blown the highlights. By giving yourself a 1/2 stop cushion you insured that you would not blow the highlights. Since your objective was to do a B&W conversion there was not even any concern about which color channel might get blown first.

My problem with applying ETTR is not with the way that you, Gene and I do it. You are not the purveyors of the ETTR/EBTR/ERADR nonsense to which I am referring.

The only time where the ETTR discussion goes off the rails is when the examples given show that an image exposed as ETTR is always washed out, brighter than the final image.
And the claim that a benefit of ETTR is reduced noise is also easily disproved.

Here is an example with ETTR exposure. It is darker than the final result after shadow recovery. Note that there are tiny spikes at the right end of the three histograms from the specular highlights.

This image, like the other 180 I took on March 10, was actually exposed without actually metering anything at all. See Exposure Value - No metering used. That makes it even simpler than actually applying ETTR at all.

Knowledge is power.

What makes you think that we disagree? I don't have any problem with doing it the way that you describe. That's exactly what I would have done!

The way that we do it is based on a thorough understanding of the capabilities and limitations of raw capture.

I know that you could have gone 1/2 step further and placed the exposure in the middle of exposure zone VIII and it would probably have not blown the highlights. By giving yourself a 1/2 stop cushion you insured that you would not blow the highlights. Since your objective was to do a B&W conversion there was not even any concern about which color channel might get blown first.

My problem with applying ETTR is not with the way that you, Gene and I do it. You are not the purveyors of the ETTR/EBTR/ERADR nonsense to which I am referring.

The only time where the ETTR discussion goes off the rails is when the examples given show that an image exposed as ETTR is always washed out, brighter than the final image.
And the claim that a benefit of ETTR is reduced noise is also easily disproved.

Here is an example with ETTR exposure. It is darker than the final result after shadow recovery. Note that there are tiny spikes at the right end of the three histograms from the specular highlights.

This image, like the other 180 I took on March 10, was actually exposed without actually metering anything at all. See Exposure Value - No metering used. That makes it even simpler than actually applying ETTR at all.

Knowledge is power.