Cross posted...
I got inspired to go run a test.
Here's the original jpg, there's no point in showing the original raw, it wasn't even supposed to look good.
It is intentionally underexposed to help keep the sky, which typically gets blown out in these types of shots.
Heres the cabin in jpeg, after a considerable amount of work, in fact, I applied the same settings to both images and then reduced the jpeg images to pull then down to raw levels. It actually took more work to bring the jpeg to a level I was happy with, than it did the raw file. The difference between the original jpeg and finished jpeg and original raw file and finished raw file was more dramatic... but it still needed a lot of work for a less satisfying result.
Heres the corrected raw file.
The raw file gave me a much better blues in the sky, there was an un-natural red to the area under the eve that couldn't be corrected in the jpeg file. It's a sort of messy red colour , that's not at all present in the raw file. That would actually be enough for me to toss the image.
The other three areas of interest were as follows.
The loss of detail (look at the blinds in the window) was surprising even for me.) This is shot in Raw + so this is absoltuely not an aberration in exposure. As well, the JPG file just looks a lot less sharp than the RAW image.
IN the bottom left corner I was able to rescue wood grain right to the snow line. The jpg has a black area.
Once again it you look at the porch post, the post is dark wood coloured in the Raw and black in the jpeg in parts of it.
That gives you some idea of why some of us would be tempted to just use RAW. But the first unaltered jpeg is still quite nice. To me this is like the same argument as k-5 IIs or D800e. You can see a difference, but what is that worth to you? For some of us nothing. SO shoot jpeg. I shoot a lot of sunsets where 1/4 of my pictures is in the area of the scale that would be black on a jpeg but a perfectly acceptable image taken in a raw file. In a full sun shot like this, there is very little of the images that is affected. For the casual shooter, I'm guessing RAW isn't worth it.
But, it should also be noted, the jpeg took as much work to process as did the raw file. In my mind, then if you're using images small enough that the lack of sharpness is rendered moot, if you don't mind losing a few images that could have been saved, and you need the space you'll save with JPEG images, then jpeg is for you.
If you're picky in your PP and you want maximum control. If you want to avoid the image degradation that occurs using jpeg, and if you spend a lot of time doing PP on your jpegs anyway, buy a larger hard drive and go for RAW.