Going back to JPEG (...and the story of why I went RAW only up till now)

So I've reverted to my old ways: I've gone back to shooting JPG + RAW but I'm keeping the SOOC JPGs for Photos (Mac) and archiving the RAWs to an external, but I'm not doing any post anymore to RAWs at all, except when it's badly needed IE WB weirdness, or printing pictures in which case I'll call up the RAWs desired to print. You're probably like, come again?

So why did I start shooting RAW many moons ago? Because I realized it was the digital negative equivalent and keeping it at least in an archive, even if I was just using the SOOC JPGs anyhow, could be useful for pulling more detail out of photos later in life if desired. And, it has. I've gone back to my XTi RAWs over time even. DPP4 can pull new life out of em.

But I never actually used RAWs till much later.

Fast foward to my FF days, it was getting big, and heavy, getting left home, I tried a G1X II, it's got Dynamic Range issues. I started using the RAWs in DPP3 at the time to pull more detail out of the photos as the JPEGs weren't cutting it. Well the RAWs were better, but it was still a problem.

Then the M went on firesale back in 2012-2013. Picked one up for 250 with the 22 pancake. Steal of a deal. Replaced my G1X II overnight.

Shot RAW with it and processed it too, except I found that when mixing and matching DPP RAW digest on DIGIC5 stuff (EOS M and M2 were DIGIC5 vs the G1X II had DIGIC6), it produced radical results for noise reduction. Wasn't till the M got the DIGIC6 in the M3 that noise processing improved so I continued to shoot RAW and JPG, but was using RAW only and pretty much throwing away the SOOC JPGs.

M3 comes out. AF is much better vs the M/M2, good enough though that I started using continuous burst again, except, buffer fills at 4 shots with JPG + RAW, but, 5 with RAW only (or something like that, it's been a while). You also picked up another like 0.6FPS if you did RAW only, instead of RAW + JPG. Thus I started shooting RAW only since I was already using just the RAWs, thus I picked up another 20% buffer and 0.6FPS in continuous burst. Win-Win.

M5 comes out. Still using RAWs only, but now the buffer is much bigger, and continuous burst is much faster, and the in-camera correction is about 80-90% of what you could squeeze out of DPP4 anyways from a RAW. I did a quick comparison, but found the color rendition a bit better with RAW to JPG via DPP4 vs SOOC JPG, so I kept the course.

Then a few months ago, I was like, gee, there's always been something different with Canon colors since DIGIC6 and newer, it's been very Sony-esque. I went on a small journey and discovered custom picture styles. Loaded a bunch up and tested and found if I modified the "Nikon" one by lowering the saturation by 1, it was good enough. I started using the profile in DPP4, and then figured I'd save myself a step in my DPP4 process and loaded the profile in camera, and used it thus all pictures ICC got tagged saving me a step.

Well just got my Rokinon, shortly thereafter, which has now given me a very FF equivalent fast prime for my M5. I'm finally happy with my gear and decided you know what? I'm going to go simple, I'm going to go back to JPG since it's good enough, and then I realized, the modified Nikon profile is giving me the color accuracy I want, so I no longer need RAW processing to get the look, or make it look closer to what I want. And, I don't need more buffer, I loose a single frame by doing JPG + RAW, and I loose no FPS by doing it either. DIGIC7 has noise correction almost as good. The final nail in the coffin was ironically today, when I went to digest Rokinon RAWs mixed with native Canon glass, DPP4 wouldn't let me execute bulk DLO corrections if the batch selected had non Canon glass in it. I said to myself, well I was already gonna do it, lets try. So far so good. Noise is good, color is good, and I don't have to do nightly processing on my batches anymore. Still keeping the RAWs though, I mean why not?

So there you have it. In my opinion, once you have an M5 or M6, and you experiment with picture profiles to where you like em, there's no reason to keep doing a DPP4 or LR regime. Just not needed. Or if you like the post-DIGIC5 colors, meh, good enough.

Now I need to get more familiar with HDR and AEB on the M5, they're okay, but my former 5DIII did both better. Thankfully I don't use either much, but I'm starting to explore more techniques, and improve my shooting skills and manual focus skills and focus less on post processing now. What a thought. Also I can write long "blogs" like this now. Thanks for reading and I hope some folks learned a thing or two about why to shoot RAW, and why not, etc etc.