comment: My test was flawed, I tried again using this method and again with a cable release & mirror lockup and I could not produce any discernable differences. The tests in the link above come to the same conclusion except that their using a more precise raw converter somehow produced measurable differences, with CS1 ACR I could see ZERO difference.

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This is a test to see if highlight recovery is better with uncompressed Nikon D200 RAW NEF files. My conclusion is yes, there is an improvement. Interestingly the NEF file was MUCH larger (15,851KB-vs-8,597KB) but not that different when converted to DNG (7,976KB-vs-7,039KB) with jpegs actually slightly reversed (3,737KB-vs-3,759KB). I also did one of the jpegs at default contrast & saturation, both of the raw conversions were tuned down one stop & all contrast settings bottomed out for highlight recovery.Shot on a 105 f/2.8 VR macro at about 6 ft away to a wicker chair backlit by a bright window.