Nikon compressed Raw format

With my Nikon camera I have often used the compressed RAW format as it is defined lossless to all practical purposes and doubles the capacity of my cards. But now I have read an article that all the owners of a Nikon camera shoul read I think:
http://www.completedigitalphotography.com

Thanks Guiseppe. I have never used the compressed RAW option, and now I guess I'm glad I didn't.

I didn't read anything in that article that I wasn't already aware of concernig Nikon's compressed NEF. I've shot thousands of compressed NEFs with my D200 and have seen no visible loss of IQ. It seems to me the reason to go ahead and use uncompressed NEFs is because storage memory is cheap, not because the image will be unacceptably degraded because some data in the highlights is lost.

On my D80, I think my only choice is compressed RAW.

Nathan

We have been using a D1X for quite some time and the only issue we had with compressed RAW was that it took much longer to write than an uncompressed file. One gigabyte drives can store 132 images which is quite adequate.

My suggestion is to measure how much time it takes to compress the image. If the later cameras can compress and write a .NEF file as quickly as an uncompressed file, then compressed RAW should be okay.

SADLY, each manufacturer uses a different algorithm to compress RAW images. Nikon's algorithm compresses/strips out some values/shades at the brighter (whiter) end of the spectrum because the human eye is unable to distinguish differences in value/shade at those wavelengths. My understanding is that Nikon compresses slightly in ANY .NEF image.