Just wondered if it is worth it over NEF that i normally shoot in? i enjoy the whole package including the artwork following capture but i just wondered if the camera's brain could do a better job than me, sometimes i look at my NEF files after pp work in Lightroom and still feel they are missing something, almost as if i need to push all the sliders in LR up to Max - if you see what i mean, where as sometimes a Jpeg can have all that added at no extra cost - so to speak.
In-camera JPG's can look pretty good but you're leaving the decision making up to the camera and you're forever surrendering the option to work creatively with the image file. Oh sure you CAN do post processing on a JPG but what you can do there, versus what you can do with a RAW file, is almost beyond fair comparison. For shots that I frankly just don't care much about, JPG would be fine assuming shooting conditions are pretty much ideal. If we're talking about shots I would, shall we say, be "putting my name to" then I'm going to want the full control that comes from shooting in RAW.
Your comment about pushing all the sliders to their maximum is a little disconcerting, in my mind at least, and leaves me wondering how much you've educated yourself on how to post-process to begin with. In my opinion post processing is as much an art as good photography itself is and doing post processing is no less a part of digital photography than taking the shot is. Really good shots require getting it right in-camera *and* in post' and that continuum requires a well developed set of skills in both arenas. Sometimes I think there is a general misconception that really good photography is easy and in my experience nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the very first lesson my very first photography mentor told me was, and I quote, "Photography is
work." He also had a penchant for understatement as I would only later discover.
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