Ok let's put this differently: Back in the days of film, slides had nice colorful imagery on them. Some very high-end people did differential processing, clipping off pieces of film and testing them, but mostly photographers used the color and exposure as shot and were happy with that. On the other hand, negative film had wide lattitude, and was usually shot with a view to a choice of exposure and filtration at print time.
Now, Adobe wants us to believe that what comes out of a digital camera is necessarily unusable because it's like negative film, and we *need* to get Lightroom or Photoshop and twiddle sliders like crazy to get a decent print from a Raw. The camera makers on the other hand seem to realize that many users, incluidng pros, want or need immediately usable previews and immediately printable imagery, right out of the camera, like slide film: Raw here is just for saving or tuning the shot.
Of course, it's clear that Fuji, Nikon and Canon and Sony have the ability to process Raw files, in spite of what Adobe wuld like us to believe. In fact as the originators of camera technology FNCS have the ability to deliver results better than any one-size fits all solution. And with in-camera video coming, I believe they now have a greater incentive to deliver good renderings. Jpegs and extended Jpegs will improve soon.
Assessing Jpeg quality is a perfectly reasonable subjective test of a camera. I'm astonished no reviewer did the KenRockwell test before. But then, nobody in the press never really asked whther there were really "real" WMDs in Irak, an equally reasonable albeit subjective assessment, which had consequences considerably more far-reaching.
Edmund
