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On this forum and other photographic gear forums, most posters are photo enthusiasts and tend to forget most people dont even care about the whole photographic technology.
My daughter has a PhD in computer science, works as a software developer in avionics in Thalès, one of the world major defense hightech company.
For her travel and events photography, she prefers using a dedicated compact zoom camera rather than her smartphone, and she processes the OOC JPEG files in PICASA, to improve the framing and contrast, whereas most of her friends never do any post processing.
Her camera, Panasonic LF1, now discontinued, is still sold under the Leica brand as "Leica C". It is a very nice pocketable camera, with a built in (very tiny) EVF, it allows P,S,A, and M modes, and it can save the RAW files. But she never used anything else than the I-Auto or scene modes, and doesnt want to hear about aperture, shutter speed or raw processing (though she, of course, has a powerful laptop with a large screen, a Photoshop Elements license, and a tablet that can house a SD card and has a USB external port).
When we went together to Tanzania for safari, she borrowed my K30 and an old film era Pentax 100-300 FA zoom , but shot only in green auto mode, until I showed her she could get better results in long telephoto in TAV mode (but she just dialed the aperture and shutter speed I told her to, and didnt want to dig deeper in handling the camera).
When we came back, though I offered her to give her the gear with other kit lenses, she just said "no, too big and heavy to carry around, and I dont see the difference in the output for my photography". What I mean is that, IMO, advanced post processing and shooting raw is now only done by some enthusiasts and/or very demanding photographers.
Already, not all pro photographers do process raw, because many have noticed that the in-cameras JPEG engines are much better than 10 years ago, and the OOC JPEGs are good enough for what they need, even for high contrast or low light/high ISO scenes.
As the cameras CPU will continue to offer more processing power, and as software is a cumulating science, this trend will IMO become predominant in the future, and most skilled photographers will be happy with the OOC JPEG, once the camera tweaked to their taste, and wont use the raw file anymore.
This will also be the rule for pros, they will maybe save the RAW besides the JPEG, but they wont take the time to do any advanced PP, save fo a very few outstanding pictures for very demanding uses.
Thus, IMO, the RAW processing process will become less and less important in photography within a few years, and the main question will be which sensor size will become tomorrow standard for advanced cameras, as even Canon wont be able to maintain several different systems in a declining market.
IMO, the 1" sensor will probably be the standard for future fixed lens cameras, and for ILC, the major battle will be between M43 and APS-C, and one of them will progressively win. The larger FF format inheritated from the film era will become a niche market like MF today. So will become our beloved SLR optical viewfinder, as less and less people will be interested by its specificity.
Dont misunderstand me, I do love my K3, its bright pentaprism viewfinder and its ergonomy. Shooting with it is the most enjoyable experience for stills. But I hate carrying a bag full of lenses and I think it will become tomorrow the same kind of niche product as today's Leica rangefinders cameras.
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