Do you use either ALO or HTP?

Hi Stan, there can be a huge difference in highlight details being preserved if you shoot with HTP turned on. I leave it on by default and it blows my mind at times. Coincidentally, I did some testing today, hence why I am responding to your post.

For over a year I have left HTP on by default and I turned it on the day I bought a Canon 80D. I have always been blown away by the latitude of this camera's files in recovering shadows and highlights with raw files. I assumed the camera had a massive DR going by the amount of details I could capture/recover. For example, I have captured a white/grey seagull in the harsh Australian midday summer sun casting a harsh solid-black shadow onto the concrete pillar it was sitting on. I was able to recover details in the brightest white feathers while also recovering full details of the texture of the concrete pillar in black shadow. I could even overexpose the shadowed area.

I read an article saying it was just processing trickery which could be manually applied to the raw file in software, so I shot a whole event yesterday with HTP turned off. I did this to avoid adding any additional noise in the shadows which HTP can cause at times. I was horrified. For the first time ever since buying the camera I was finding I could not recover highlight details that would have been a piece of cake with HTP turned on. Those highlights would have simply been there already if shot with HTP on. It is winter here now and the contrast is nowhere near as high as on a bright summer day with a clear sky.

I did some test shots with a tripod capturing identical images with HTP on and off. In the most extreme my cat was lying on top of a chair with her front paws on a window ledge in the direct sunlight. I exposed for the cat which was in shade in the room. With HTP on the cat was correctly exposed, the windows ledge and cat's paws were overexposed, but still showed full detail. I could darken the highlights to taste, but detail was already evident without any adjustment. The shot with HTP off had the cat correctly exposed and the window ledge and cat's paws were blown out beyond recovery. I moved the Highlight Recovery slider to -3 (max recovery) in DPP and still had less detail than the unedited HTP image SOOC. Because I shot at ISO 200 there barely any difference in noise in the shadow areas of the image. There were some shadows on the window ledge cast by the vertical blinds. These shadows didn't exist in the image shot with HTP off as they were burnt out with most of the rest of the window ledge. The shadows were clearly visible in the unedited image with HTP on and looked true to the real scene when I applied some highlight recovery.

If you shoot in fairly flat lighting conditions there is probably no need to turn HTP on and restrict yourself from being able to select ISO 100. However, if you shoot outdoors in less than ideal situations, such as midday sun, then it is a no-brainer. Turn on HTP and preserve more highlight details than you could possibly recover using any means of software recovery later. I do have a Canon T6S (760D) too amongst several other cameras. I'll do some testing when I get a chance with that camera to see if it works as well as it does on the 80D. Sadly, I basically stopped using the T6S when I bought the 80D.