Alfred Molon writes:

I'd be curious about your opinion/experience with the JPEG output of
today's cameras. Do you only shoot RAW and postprocess everything, or
RAW+JPEG and only postprocess selectively, or do you only shoot JPEG?

My personal experience is that the JPEG output of modern cameras is not
bad, sometimes surprisingly good, and -if the camera is set up properly-
only a certain percentage of images need RAW processing.

I have almost no experience with camera JPEG engines, because I shoot
everything RAW.

However, from my little experience, and what I read from others, your
suggestion that the JPEG output is often surprisingly good seems to be
true; certainly for snapshots, event photos, stuff you're not going to
do half an hour or so of work on an individual photo getting to
"exhibition quality" prints. (Nailing the exposure is almost always
more important than setting the JPEG engine in the camera up right; just
avoid any extreme settings, and you should do okay there.)

For me, event photos are exactly where I need the safety margin RAW
provides, though -- there are no do-overs, and the tradeoff between
"fast" and "perfect" often has to be made in favor of "fast" or you may
miss the shot entirely. When I get a good exposure, RAW rarely adds
much; but when I *don't*, RAW frequently lets me pull a good-looking
photo out.

Yeah, after 40+ years, I still don't nail exposures perfectly each time.
Whoda thunkit? I think I've tended to go for "faster" whenever the
choice comes up. I often get photos because I *didn't* take time to go
for perfect at the moment they occurred, and am able to get a good print
from the RAW file later. If I'd spent extra time fixing the exposure, I
wouldn't have gotten the photo at all.
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