K20D highlight recovery

In another thread there was talk about the D-range option of the K20D and how that may help in highlight recovery.
As I was giving my new 16-50 a spin yesterday I thought I should give it a try. Before showing the results I have to state that I was shooting at 2.8 (i.e. wide open) as I was testing the lens. So the 100% crops are not sharp, this is because they are out of focus, not because my 16-50 copy is crap. I left EXIF intact.

Here is the test subject, correct exposure (+0.5 EV):
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_RDP4173.jpg[/IMG]
You will see in the crops that some areas are blown already.

Here's almost the same shots, now with +2.5 EV:
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_RDP4175a.jpg[/IMG]

And this is the same shot developed in SilkyPix with -1.9 EV:
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_RDP4175.jpg[/IMG]

Now a 100% of the lighthouse top. First the correct shot:
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_RDP4173100pu.jpg[/IMG]

and the overexposed (then recovered) one:
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_RDP4175100pu.jpg[/IMG]

Same for the lower portion. Correct exposure (already I needed to apply some highlight recovery in SilkyPix):
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_RDP4173100lu.jpg[/IMG]

and the bright one:
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_RDP4175100pl.jpg[/IMG]

Remember, these are not sharp as I focused on the central portion of the lighthouse with 2.8 aperture.

It's not magic, there are some areas where the recovery wasn't fully possible. But I am impressed how well this shot, overexposed by two stops, could be pulled back.

The bad thing is that I didn't take any shots with D-range disabled. So there's some work left to be done.

Prieni

According to my real life tests, it seems d-range helps when shooting in bright conditions, but may introduce noise in shadowy places. I usually shoot jpegs so when I need to try get some blown details back to life I use Paint.net's shadow/highlight recovery tool, which often does a good job.

I use the D-range setting at ISO200 for Macro shots with flash and have been finding it very useful. It helps preserve details that I can pull out in PP and because the lens is so sharp at macro distances the additional noise seems better controlled. When I've used d-range with more general wildlife shots I've found that, although it can help preserve highlights, it simply adds too much noise and can easily ruin shots.