the picture is much too bright for my taste
On reflection I agree. I spent too much time messing around with the various settings.
Thank you for the explanation about the pivot. Using the tonal map definitely helps me understand this more.
I phrased my point very badly.
Certainly in darktable and from a PDF I read about using RawTherapee (Question on simple work flow in Rawtherapee - #5 by Wayne_Sutton) , the general recommendation is to push exposure to get the midtones correct then deal with any blown out highlights. I seemed to be ignoring this in option 2 so I was wondering how others would have dealt with this.
I appreciate the help with this.