ETTR

ETTR or expose to the right. What am I talking about? I'll explain.
With digital ideally you need to ETTR, by that I mean expose for the highlights (the right side of the histogram) Why you ask? Well it's simple really, it's to do with the way digital works.
You see digital data is linear and the way it's broken down is half of all the data is the brightest stop, then half or the remaining data is the next stop etc etc, so very little data is used to record the darkest area.
If you are tempted to under expose significantly to preserve the highlights your loosing a lot of the data (because it's in the brightest parts of the image) so when the data is converted, either as an in camera jpeg or in your raw converter, in effect your stretching out the darker tones (but remember these have a lot less data) so you have more risk of banding, artifacts, or noise.
Ideally you go as bright as you can without blowing the highlights.
Why am I telling you this, simply because I have spent 2 days editing a wedding that should have taken a few hours, sadly the photographer has never heard the expression ETTR, or indeed the words white balance, correct exposure or composition! Even the word focus is in doubt!
I have had to individually correct 700+ pics, many needed separate noise reduction, and a lot of shadow/highlight work (time consuming) and I'm not even going to get into the colours, how anybody with a modern state of the art camera can get so many different colours in one batch of shots never ceases to amaze me.
But I think the thing that worries me most is lack of attention to detail, such as shooting 5000 iso on a bright sunny day, WHY!!!! you don't need it. Or not noticing a set or railings, a lamppost and a bright Orange fence behind the bride and groom, how in the name of all that's sane could you miss it! Ray Charles could have b****y seen it and he was blind!