And after all, PEN F was designed exactly to the photography on the site, not while sitting on computer for hour or two to tweak one photo.
If it takes you 1-2 hrs to tweak a single photo to get a similar result to the PEN-F's monochrome then you're doing something very, very wrong. I actually tried doing that several months ago and found that I could get extremely close to a PEN-F's result in about 5-10 minutes for my first attempt using the Silver Efex plugin (free) with Lightroom.
First of all, when you are doing art gallery you don't spend 5-10min to process one photo.
That's irrelevant. I'm making a comparison between the PEN-F results and getting similar output in post.
Secondly, when you are doing art, you don't have a sample to what you want to turn your photo.
Thirdly, your attempt is close, but not the same and not as good looking. Maybe if you would have put a hour more you would get there, instead rushing out.
You're grasping at straws, now. It's close enough that if I made a dozen PEN-F-like monochrome images vs the PEN-F originals, you wouldn't be able to tell which is which. In fact, if you think you're so good at identifying PEN-F mono images, we could solicit raw and jpeg samples from PEN-F users and set up a test for you. And I guarantee I wouldn't have to spend an hour on each one.
The magic is that you stand on the site and you just scroll few knobs and dials, adjust some curves, choose color filtering and you see how all that changes the photo on the site.
Personally, I prefer to do that later on. When I'm shooting, I find it enough to concentrate on focus, composition, and the right exposure. I like having the flexibility of adjusting contrast, tonal curves and colour sensitivity afterwards, when I have more time.
That is the key, you are faster and more efficient on the site when you see what you get and you just see what you get. So it is win-win situation to use EVF with live filter. You spend less time when you see the photo in B/W with contrast, tonal curves instead color and no requirement to imagine how it would work nor time to spend in front of computer "What did I see in this?".
The flipside to that is that you are using time you could be shooting on site to make those adjustments when you could just as easily deal with them later. As for not knowing, later on, what you saw in the scene, that's unlikely unless you've got a terrible memory. Thousands if not millions of photographers have worked on their images in the darkroom days, if not weeks or months, after shooting the image, and haven't turned out great results.
And when you anyways can't reproduce the work you get in camera (as in your example) then you can always just shoot JPEG+raw and twiddle the raw as much you want if you are not happy at all to the JPEG.
But how many would want to go through all their photographs with a new style?
It's not a matter of going through *all* my old photos with a new style. I've got back to *some* older ones when it occurs to me that a new technique or technology would improve it.
So why to shoot ALL with raw, when you just want *some* to be re-tweaked?
Because it's easy, and it gives me more options.
JPEG and image editors in last few years has allowed far more JPEG editing latitude than previously was possible even with the raw. That is the thing that has changed a radically.
How have JPEG editors expanded their latitude? JPEG files are still limited to 8-bit depth.
And the reasons to shoot raw is less and less there if you just can get the shot exposure nailed without clipping the main details.
We're talking about monochrome conversion here. Having a full colour raw file lets me do the b&w conversion at my leisure.
The idea "I do it in the post then" is same as DSLR shooters who need to chimp the screen after each new shot that did they get it.
Actually, the process you describe in using the PEN-F sounds more like someone who is chimping the screen while they're on site.
And then spend more time in most shots front of computer than shooting more keepers as they can't see it right away does photo work or not.
Again, what you're saying doesn't make sense. I don't spend any time adjusting colour sensitivity, grain, or tonal curves when I'm out shooting. I spend my time shooting. For stuff that I can do in post, with more control, I leave for later.
