Me too. But I wonder at what point we'll all have to concede and just say frak-it? I mean besides for creative processing and/or major surgery...
When the jpegs look as good or better than processed RAWs which they're getting close to now, I wonder how many of us will still spend the time - and it is very time consuming if you want a result that bests the current jpegs.
Even the GH1 was approaching jpeg perfection under certain conditions. I recently did a series where I shot the first 100 shots in RAW, then the next 100 in full sized JPegs, and then the next 100 in medium sized jpegs, and then the last 100 in small jpegs.
I was pretty astonished to find that the small Jpegs looked almost exactly like what I was ending up with after post processing and scaling the RAWs for the web. Below were all shot Small Jpeg:
Unless I wanna do selective sharpening and selective NR I can't get the RAWs to look any better than that - even the tone curves are approximately perfect. And selective edits are way time consuming.
As I see it the GH1 represents Panasonic's second try at in-camera jpeg processing. It goes like this (in my mind anyway) if we start the revisioning from their first M4/3 offering:
G1 = 1st try.
GH1 = 2nd try.
G2 = 3rd try.
GH2 = 4th try.
G3 = 5th try.
And the GH3 when it arrives will be their 6th try at getting it right. I dunno how "scientifically accurate" or even reality based that is but that's kinda how I see it.
RAW on the other hand unless they're offering up massively pre-processed RAWs, doesn't change much without changing the sensor type or the sensor size. The G2 and the G3 should look just about identical if they both have the same size sensor with the same pixel density. I'd say the G1 and G3 should be identical too but the G2 got a boost in pixel density thus changing it up a little. This would indicate to me anyway, that the advantages of RAW processing will diminish even as Jpegs surpass them at some point (for general photography). Currently I think we're just bout at that point right now.
It should be the case (again unless Panasonic's RAW's aren't really raw) that every modern APS-C camera produces less noise at any given amplification (ISO Gain), than all M4/3 cameras. There are some factors like the quality of the components, and the board level layout, and etc, that can influence the amount of noise that ultimately ends up in our images but as I understand it the main factors are hard physic oriented aspects of the sensor itself - mainly size and pixel density.
So.... when I read someone saying that the G3's RAW image is so much better than the G2 or that it directly competes with higher end APS-C models the only things I can think of are:
- The tests they're looking at are flawed or rigged.
- They're just wrong. Or,
- Panasonic's RAW's aren't really raw - which I guess is about the same as #1
If Panasonic's RAW's are like fat, partially processed jpegs I'm OK with that - it means less PP for me and more time shooting! But it seems somewhat disingenuous to credit the sensor or to credit Panasonic for anything other than better in-camera processing.
When I read them saying the same things about the in-camera JPeg results it's obvious (to me anyway) that they like the new processing better - period. Well besides the possibility for flawed or fudged tests anyway.
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