Best JPEG output from mirrorless cameras.

[Kiat Leong]

As we know, mobile phones are producing amazing photos even though their sensor sizes are small. It's due to their powerful post-processing feature like iPhone's deep fusion and etc..

The question is, i want to know which mirrorless camera produces the best in-camera post-processing output to JPEG. Can the best matches those from the mobiles?
This is important for those shooters who don't edit their raws using PC post-processing editors and want to rely solely on the camera.

Thank you.

 

[Labe]

Check out fujifilm mirrorless.

 

[alcelc]

As we know, mobile phones are producing amazing photos even though their sensor sizes are small. It's due to their powerful post-processing feature like iPhone's deep fusion and etc..

Is it? There was a recent thread that the OP faced some problem on his Huawei 20 Pro because of the computational effect:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63468100

The question is, i want to know which mirrorless camera produces the best in-camera post-processing output to JPEG. Can the best matches those from the mobiles?
This is important for those shooters who don't edit their raws using PC post-processing editors and want to rely solely on the camera.
Thank you.

There are a lot of things related to SOOC jpg in case shooter wishes to keep PP minimal. The exposure, color tone, saturation, sharpness etc are the basic. Others recently promoted by smartphone like HDR or stacking etc actually are available on mirrorless a long time ago.

Regarding the basics, under the deep customizability of most recent cameras, still saying this brand color or that brand characteristic should likely be a matter whether the shooter can break himself away from the default setting only.

Specially Live View has been developed to its current stage such that shooter has the chance to adjust almost everything according to the real time visual guide. Then there are various jpg preset profiles, fine tuning on individual parameters, add on filter effect... We can actually produce something very personal that the canned output of smart phone can't compare.

Of course it would depend on our ability to master our camera as well as our requirement (instant food or to cook a michelin star dishes by ourselves).

Regarding computational photo, it could be less popular on DSLRs but HDR, panorama, focus stacking, Live composite... etc in-camera features are not new for some mirrorless... Might look for Sony, Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic... I suppose the latest Canon R and Nikon Z should have catch the train(?)...

 

[yardcoyote]

I'm a jpeg only shooter and am very happy with the jpegs from both my Fuji and my Olympus cameras. I would probably give the edge to Fuji. I prefer their film simulations to any other system of presets I have found.

You can't expect any camera to give you ideal jpegs that match your personal vision right out of the box, though. It takes several sessions of hard work , shooting and reviewing, to get a jpeg engine's deep settings arranged to suit your taste. I personally often turn both sharpening and noise reduction way down, sometimes to the minimum, because I find them a bit heavy handed at the base settings. It is easy to add in a bit of tuned sharpening yourself in post.

And yes, I post process my jpegs. If nothing else most images need to be cropped, and it's very easy to toss in a quick tweak or two to gamma, contrast, highlights/shadows, and even white balance at the same time. I use FastStone at my desk (don't be distracted by the name--it is far more than an image viewer) and Pixlr on my phone and tablets. Hypocam is a powerful little black and white jpeg editor.

I have noticed over the years that camera models vary pretty widely in their jpeg output out of the box, even if they are from the same manufacturer. A camera aimed at consumers will be set up to produce a "punchy" image, contrasty and highly saturated, while a higher end camera aimed at enthusiasts will come with more neutral settings from the factory. This may cause the unwary to be surprised by it's "flat jpegs". It is easy, of course, to go in and punch things up in those deep settings, a little or a lot, but you have to be aware of the need to do it and be willing to put in the work at the beginning.

--
Instagram: @yardcoyote

 

[markyboy81]

The Samsung NX line of camera produce great JPEG output. Sadly they can't really be recommended unless you're happy to accept it's a dead system, in which case there are certainly some bargains to be had!

 

[Howard V]

I'm a jpeg only shooter and am very happy with the jpegs from both my Fuji and my Olympus cameras. I would probably give the edge to Fuji. I prefer their film simulations to any other system of presets I have found.

You can't expect any camera to give you ideal jpegs that match your personal vision right out of the box, though. It takes several sessions of hard work , shooting and reviewing, to get a jpeg engine's deep settings arranged to suit your taste. I personally often turn both sharpening and noise reduction way down, sometimes to the minimum, because I find them a bit heavy handed at the base settings. It is easy to add in a bit of tuned sharpening yourself in post.

And yes, I post process my jpegs. If nothing else most images need to be cropped, and it's very easy to toss in a quick tweak or two to gamma, contrast, highlights/shadows, and even white balance at the same time. I use FastStone at my desk (don't be distracted by the name--it is far more than an image viewer) and Pixlr on my phone and tablets. Hypocam is a powerful little black and white jpeg editor.

I have noticed over the years that camera models vary pretty widely in their jpeg output out of the box, even if they are from the same manufacturer. A camera aimed at consumers will be set up to produce a "punchy" image, contrasty and highly saturated, while a higher end camera aimed at enthusiasts will come with more neutral settings from the factory. This may cause the unwary to be surprised by it's "flat jpegs". It is easy, of course, to go in and punch things up in those deep settings, a little or a lot, but you have to be aware of the need to do it and be willing to put in the work at the beginning.

Excellent summary, yardcoyote. I feel pretty fortunate to have the perfect combination for personal taste, in X10 and X-S1 jpegs. Velvia film simulation with DR 400 at M size does the magic for many landscape shots. The X-S1 goes a bit cyan in default color, so I've added a step of both red and amber to the default. Otherwise, good "out of the box".

 

[markyboy81]

I'm a jpeg only shooter and am very happy with the jpegs from both my Fuji and my Olympus cameras. I would probably give the edge to Fuji. I prefer their film simulations to any other system of presets I have found.

You can't expect any camera to give you ideal jpegs that match your personal vision right out of the box, though. It takes several sessions of hard work , shooting and reviewing, to get a jpeg engine's deep settings arranged to suit your taste. I personally often turn both sharpening and noise reduction way down, sometimes to the minimum, because I find them a bit heavy handed at the base settings. It is easy to add in a bit of tuned sharpening yourself in post.

And yes, I post process my jpegs. If nothing else most images need to be cropped, and it's very easy to toss in a quick tweak or two to gamma, contrast, highlights/shadows, and even white balance at the same time. I use FastStone at my desk (don't be distracted by the name--it is far more than an image viewer) and Pixlr on my phone and tablets. Hypocam is a powerful little black and white jpeg editor.

I have noticed over the years that camera models vary pretty widely in their jpeg output out of the box, even if they are from the same manufacturer. A camera aimed at consumers will be set up to produce a "punchy" image, contrasty and highly saturated, while a higher end camera aimed at enthusiasts will come with more neutral settings from the factory. This may cause the unwary to be surprised by it's "flat jpegs". It is easy, of course, to go in and punch things up in those deep settings, a little or a lot, but you have to be aware of the need to do it and be willing to put in the work at the beginning.

You post process your JPEGs? You may have opened a can of worms disclosing this on here!

However, I only shoot in JPEG and generally make very minor adjustments. It's surprising just how much latitude a JPEG has in terms of being able to edit it. I did experiment with RAW a bit but it was stressing my computer too much and I couldn't really see any difference. If anything the JPEGs look nearly perfect to begin with so require far less work.

 

[stevo23]

As we know, mobile phones are producing amazing photos even though their sensor sizes are small.

Debatable - I'm not impressed. They're "good enough", but not "amazing".

It's due to their powerful post-processing feature like iPhone's deep fusion and etc..
The question is, i want to know which mirrorless camera produces the best in-camera post-processing output to JPEG. Can the best matches those from the mobiles?
This is important for those shooters who don't edit their raws using PC post-processing editors and want to rely solely on the camera.
Thank you.

I would say that it's not a simple answer. Any decent APSC or FF mirrorless camera produces better jpegs than a smartphone even with default processing - better detail, lower noise, etc. etc. I've shot Sony, Fuji and Nikon and I've always felt that Nikon has the best jpegs from the factory defaults.

But all of them can be tweaked to look great and Fuji has great choices of color balance/contrast/detail via the film simulations. So if in-camera jpeg is your goal, I think you should look at Fuji.

However, smartphones are employing post processing tricks to get around their more limited DR and poor noise but also to do things like star photos in-camera. ILCs aren't doing these tricks in-camera so much.

 

[Howard V]

I'm a jpeg only shooter and am very happy with the jpegs from both my Fuji and my Olympus cameras. I would probably give the edge to Fuji. I prefer their film simulations to any other system of presets I have found.

You can't expect any camera to give you ideal jpegs that match your personal vision right out of the box, though. It takes several sessions of hard work , shooting and reviewing, to get a jpeg engine's deep settings arranged to suit your taste. I personally often turn both sharpening and noise reduction way down, sometimes to the minimum, because I find them a bit heavy handed at the base settings. It is easy to add in a bit of tuned sharpening yourself in post.

And yes, I post process my jpegs. If nothing else most images need to be cropped, and it's very easy to toss in a quick tweak or two to gamma, contrast, highlights/shadows, and even white balance at the same time. I use FastStone at my desk (don't be distracted by the name--it is far more than an image viewer) and Pixlr on my phone and tablets. Hypocam is a powerful little black and white jpeg editor.

I have noticed over the years that camera models vary pretty widely in their jpeg output out of the box, even if they are from the same manufacturer. A camera aimed at consumers will be set up to produce a "punchy" image, contrasty and highly saturated, while a higher end camera aimed at enthusiasts will come with more neutral settings from the factory. This may cause the unwary to be surprised by it's "flat jpegs". It is easy, of course, to go in and punch things up in those deep settings, a little or a lot, but you have to be aware of the need to do it and be willing to put in the work at the beginning.

You post process your JPEGs? You may have opened a can of worms disclosing this on here!

However, I only shoot in JPEG and generally make very minor adjustments. It's surprising just how much latitude a JPEG has in terms of being able to edit it. I did experiment with RAW a bit but it was stressing my computer too much and I couldn't really see any difference. If anything the JPEGs look nearly perfect to begin with so require far less work.

I find more recent jpeg files and processing more malleable than ten or fifteen years ago. My older iMac also sometimes chokes on 20 MP raw files.

 

[yardcoyote]

Astia in the garden for me, and lots of monochrome. I still have my X10 and plan to use it more this year.

 

[Aberaeron]

I shoot maybe 90% jpegs with multiple brands. They can all be colour adjusted to taste and all have various colour profiles to choose from. Straight out of the box there is something a bit special about Olympus and Fuji colour profiles but there really isn’t much in it these days

 

[sluggy_warrior]

I feel like there's an agenda recently. New accounts popping up constantly just to promote smartphones photography? Or just flame bait to boost traffic on the site? Often time the posters just throw the question and never come back, the accounts are basically just a throw-away one-time use. Hopefully this is not the case.

Back on the topic, I used to like the JPG from Nikon's D40 as it's very natural, but often time it clipped the highlight and shadow too much. Even now I'm shooting RAW, my taste of the final JPG changes constantly. I looked back at my JPGs of last year and like, "yuck, did I do that?"

 

[msu79gt82]

As we know, mobile phones are producing amazing photos even though their sensor sizes are small.

Debatable - I'm not impressed. They're "good enough", but not "amazing".

It's due to their powerful post-processing feature like iPhone's deep fusion and etc..
The question is, i want to know which mirrorless camera produces the best in-camera post-processing output to JPEG. Can the best matches those from the mobiles?
This is important for those shooters who don't edit their raws using PC post-processing editors and want to rely solely on the camera.
Thank you.

I would say that it's not a simple answer. Any decent APSC or FF mirrorless camera produces better jpegs than a smartphone even with default processing - better detail, lower noise, etc. etc. I've shot Sony, Fuji and Nikon and I've always felt that Nikon has the best jpegs from the factory defaults.

But all of them can be tweaked to look great and Fuji has great choices of color balance/contrast/detail via the film simulations. So if in-camera jpeg is your goal, I think you should look at Fuji.

However, smartphones are employing post processing tricks to get around their more limited DR and poor noise but also to do things like star photos in-camera. ILCs aren't doing these tricks in-camera so much.

I fully agree!

Regarding the OP’s question as to which MILC produces the best JPEG output, I seriously doubt anyone can answer that question unless they own all the possibilities.

I will say from personal experience the Nikon Z6 offers exceptional JPEG output easily surpassing the iPhone Xs Max.

 

[sybersitizen]

The question is, i want to know which mirrorless camera produces the best in-camera post-processing output to JPEG.

I'm not seeing many answers to the question.

Can the best matches those from the mobiles?

Or to that question either.

Maybe it's because best is undefined. What exactly determines best? Most pleasing color? Most accurate color? Highest dynamic range retention? Highest detail retention? Lowest noise? Fewest artifacts? Least compression?

 

[Ed B]

I'm a jpeg only shooter and am very happy with the jpegs from both my Fuji and my Olympus cameras. I would probably give the edge to Fuji. I prefer their film simulations to any other system of presets I have found.

I couldn't agree more.

I post-process every image I intend to keep (everyone is different. ) but when it comes to JPEG images straight out of the camera I've always felt Fuji and Olympus are the best.

I'm like you and would probably rate Fuji just a little better.

Prior to buying a Fuji, way back when they came out with the X-E1, I primarily used Canon cameras and usually shot raw, just to be on the safe side, but with Fuji, I find myself shooting JPEG more and more and 99% of the JPEGs need very little post-processing.

The only Olympus camera I ever owned was an older EP1 and it also produced great colors and very good JPEGs.

 

[GossCTP]

The old adage for 35mm film was f/8 and be there, meaning that settings were less important than getting the shot. If you do the equivalent math for some of these smaller sensors, it comes out pretty close with the fast aperture lenses they use. I've had LG phones for a few years, and the best camera was actually a few generations ago in the LG G4. The phone itself wasn't great and died prematurely due to a boot loop, but that camera was top notch. I did the math on it and determined that its f/1.8 lens was equivalent to my APS-C DSLR at f/6.7. ISO 50 vs 640 I think it was. Noise looked the same, same framing and DOF. The cell phone was actually sharper in the center, and not splitting hairs either. By the edges the DSLR flipped the tables. Granted, the DSLR had an AA filter while the cell phone did not, and the zoom I used was an early digital design. Still, a good showing for the cell phone.

The big problem with cell phone cameras isn't the image quality. It's absolutely everything else. Still, they are always at hand, and deliver shots better than any point and shoot 35mm from yesteryear could. That's why they are good enough for the masses.

 

[Bobthearch]

The question is, i want to know which mirrorless camera produces the best in-camera post-processing output to JPEG.

I'm not seeing many answers to the question.

Perhaps because the answer is "Any of them."

Most cell phone jpegs are horribly compressed and low resolution. You'll get better from any current mirrorless system (or DSLR).

 

[Running on empty]

As we know, mobile phones are producing amazing photos even though their sensor sizes are small. It's due to their powerful post-processing feature like iPhone's deep fusion and etc..
The question is, i want to know which mirrorless camera produces the best in-camera post-processing output to JPEG. Can the best matches those from the mobiles?
This is important for those shooters who don't edit their raws using PC post-processing editors and want to rely solely on the camera.
Thank you.

Let me actually answer your question clearly.

Every single "real camera's" JPG output simply can't hold a candle to a top-tier smartphone's, which excel at tonemapping and shadow-highlight rendition (a common strawman detractors might raise is per-pixel fidelity, but this has little bearing on the gestalt--i.e., the overall aesthetic of the shot, which is where smartphones pull far ahead).

 

[Nat-90]

Hello Kiot,

Yes there are various cams available that are mirror less an produce excellent.

 

[sybersitizen]

The question is, i want to know which mirrorless camera produces the best in-camera post-processing output to JPEG.

I'm not seeing many answers to the question.

Perhaps because the answer is "Any of them."

That's not an answer to ... which mirrorless camera produces the best ...

As I suggested in my post, maybe there are few answers to that because best is undefined. What exactly determines best? Most pleasing color? Most accurate color? Highest dynamic range retention? Highest detail retention? Lowest noise? Fewest artifacts? Least compression?

Most cell phone jpegs are horribly compressed and low resolution. You'll get better from any current mirrorless system (or DSLR).

That's what the OP's other question was about ... this one:

Can the best matches those from the mobiles?