Quote Originally Posted by Anbesol
A black detail is black so long as its not 0 black, if its 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 black, its detail, whether or not there is contrast near or around it, it is detail, if only tonal detail. When a piece of an image is solid black, below 0, thats black without detail. Theres also white, and white without detail.

Freygr - check what I just said. 0 is still 0, 0 is 0 in raw, the same as it is in jpeg, 255 white is 255 white, its white without detail, tonal detail. The kind of detail you are talking about is contrast detail. I am aware of the distinction between 8-bit compressed jpeg, and 12 and 14 bit raws.

No it doesn't have more stops of tonal range, if it did everything would look gray. It can pull shadow detail better, and with the extra shades can spread it wider, but it does not have 'more stops', not even remotely. Crush a shadow in jpeg, its crushed in raw. (I'm talking 0 crushed, not 1-10 crushed)

Terry - I see exactly what you mean, but we are talking about different things. You are talking about contrast detail, I am talking purely of tonal detail. Lets say theres a sky in an image, pure blue sky - even though there is no contrast (or very little), its still detail because it is not solid black or white. It doesn't need a shift in its gradations to be considered detail.
In 12 bit RAW white is 2^12 = 4096 during the conversion to jpg white becomes 256 due to the fact JPG is 8 bit per color. Using an editor restricted to 8 bit color depth or a video driver (display) which is 8 bit color depth you can't see any color depth difference. You can see the difference on a high end printer printing large sized output.