This should help explain the
palm of your hand illustration in the first post.
While I used center weighted metering, I don't see where it would matter what metering mode you were in if you set your exposure this way.
It was cold & I took no special pains to get the exposure exactly right, but it illustrates the concept & I think this is well within the bounds of tweaking a RAW or jpg image.
Notice at the bottom right of the first & last histogram, there is a tiny peak that extends farther than you might see in a LCD.
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