High Key: How do YOU do it?

[riosun]

One of the hardest things to accomplish is high key with chromes, or should I say slides, tranparencies, whatever.

Theories abound and books have been written on this very problem. I've been told to overexpose the white background by anywhere from a half stop to 2 and a half stops.

Albert Watson said for his portrait of Eric Clapton, he had Clapton 25 feet from the background to avoid blowback (too much light from the background slamming into your lens and fuzzing out the edges of the subject). Watson obtains Rembrandt lighting on his subjects and a high key background with this method

One photographer told me --- and this sounds logical --- that if you have a pure white background, the f stop on the subject and the background should be equal, i.e., f8 and f8.
How does the GG family obtain this? I'd love to hear from as many as possible on this subject.
Bruce