IQ of Panasonic 14-45 f3.5-5.6 vs. Panasonic 12-35 f2.8

I assure you, I'm writing in good faith. As I said to Frank, I think the right thing is to call this a day. But, as I said to him, let me mark some points of misunderstanding.

I know the arguments for RAW. I mostly chose not do do that. In my personal judgment, for my purposes, that's what I do...for now. It sounds arrogant for you to tell me I am just not a sensible person for doing that. I know you wanted just to make me understand both the technical facts and your point of view. But, I understand the technical facts, and, honestly, do not feel I am not a sensible person for not reading their implications for me the same way you do.

I know all this. (Which is why, for example, I never touch my original jpegs when PPing.)

This is a bit over the top. Some people happen to like the renditions of particular jpeg engines, even going so far as trying to figure out how to reproduce them from a RAW source (precisely to use that as a starting point; obviously with the intention to do more or different processing). These are not crazy people. As I said, I print largish jpegs, and they are plenty good enough for my purposes, and for most of my audiences. HOWEVER, I could not say that with jpegs without any possibility of PP.

I can do a lot with minimal PP to improve what I get SOC JPEG. It is simply not an absurd thing to do. If I regularly wanted to do a LOT of PP, I'd immediately convert to RAW shooting.

This is a judgment I would prefer to make for myself. Plans like this are not objectively good or bad, but depend on personality, history, interests. (If I were interested in purchasing  this lens right now, I would CERTAINLY check whether it is worth the money FOR MY PURPOSES. I HATE CA, but my purposes are not as critical as many, so if I could ditch the worst part easily with a click, without changing my work flow, that is a categorically different situation than if I really had to convert to RAW processing in order to get ANY CA correction.)

But, back the the top, thank you for responding in great detail to my questions. I bet the technical information will be useful to more than me.

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The BoxerMan