Digital cameras can capture about a 4 stop range. If you are in bright sunlight you can be twice as much as that from deep shadow to strong highlight to reflections of the sun itself.
You have to decide what is important to hold detail in and if there is anything you can do to reduce the contrast either by using a reflector or fill flash for the shadows or scrimming or silking the light hitting the subject to diffuse the highlights into the shadows.
It doesn't matter where the mid tones falls, just where the shadows (left) and highlights(right). If they touch either end that is lost data. It doesn't matter if the middle is a spike or a soft curve, it is simply a representation of the volume of the varying tones in the image.
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