> there's simply no way to expand the camera sensor dynamic range without taking multiple exposures
That's the point of this paper†. They expand dynamic range by having the detectors wrap around (discarding high bits) and then recover the high bits computationally.
No mater how much you fumble with aperture and shutter speed there's simply no way to expand the camera sensor dynamic range without taking multiple exposures.
Comments
† here http://web.media.mit.edu/~hangzhao/modulo.html (linked by putterson in another comment)
I know, I just don't see how it solves this issue. You couldn't solve the issue before "fumbling with aperture size and exposure length"
The only thing I would consider that solves "fumble with aperture size and exposure length" would be huge ISO range (both ways) without any noise.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity