Joel,
You need to get the exposure right in the field. Pulling up about 1/3rd stop during post processing will be ok. However, if you pull up the exposure a lot, then there will be more noise. The areas that are close to the left side of the histogram - close to the left border in the histogram - don't hold much of data levels. So pulling them up results in noise. Please check this article: Understanding histogram:
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And by sharpening, you will also be sharpening the noise and hence that would look bad.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi