compilerbitch

I must admit, that extra bit depth really does seem to make a difference if you do the sort of photoshop work that I tend to. It's not just the stupidly wide dynamic range images, it's also the ability to deal with gradually shaded tones without Mach banding -- this tends to make life a lot easier processing black & white images of clear skies. And you can get away with crazier dynamic range manipulation stunts, of course.

I wouldn't say that it helps noticeably if your original image is quite punchy to start with, but it really comes into its own with difficult subjects though.