With today's release of Apple's Digital Camera RAW 3.8, I have been wondering if it's good enough in terms of colour reproduction and distortion correction to replace using either the Olympus Viewer 2 (very *very* slow) or JPEGs (and thus move to shooting RAW full time).
Below are comparisons taken from Aperture showing the differences in rendering between the E-P3's JPEG output and Apple's rendering of its RAWs (the info boxes refer to whichever image is on its side).
100% Crop. In the above image it's clear that the RAW on the left preserves a little more detail than the JPEG with the default noise reduction setting. To me the noise in the RAW is very reasonable and the JPEG has too strong a noise filter.
Lens: M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2
100% Crop. Here the JPEG on the left seems to have more realistic colour reproduction of the champagne muselet.
Lens: Carl Zeiss T* Planar 50mm f/1.7 lens for Contax fit.
25% Crop. Here the right hand JPEG has more accurate colour reproduction (the swan and sign seemed closer to black).
Lens: Carl Zeiss T* Planar 50mm f/1.7 lens for Contax fit.
25% Crop. Here the JPEG (left) has a more accurate colour reproduction.
Lens: M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2
33% Crop. The pinkish bar of soap towards the bottom of the frame here has been turned neon by Apple's RAW interpretation (right).
Lens: M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2
To fit. I think the meat on the left has a better colour tone to that of the camera JPEG on the right.
Lens: M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2
100% Crop. It's evident here that the right hand RAW has maintained more detail in the mushrooms than the JPEG, yes there is more noise but I don't believe it to be all that distracting.
Lens: Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 Micro Four Thirds
100% Crop. Although the RAW on the left's colours are more pleasing, the JPEG to the right was closer to life.
Lens: M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2
50% Crop. This is quite interesting as the bokeh on the JPEG on the right is smoother thanks to the default noise reduction present.
Conclusion
It's a mixed bag. The Aperture RAW renderer certainly doesn't do a bad job and it seems to be pot luck as to whether it's better than the camera's JPEG or vice versa. I'm personally going to continue shooting in RAW+JPEG for the time being but I can certainly see myself dropping the JPEG for Aperture's RAW. Of course Olympus is renowned for its excellent colour reproduction and I'm keen to see a few more shots before ditching their processing entirely.
