Here's a White Pelican at Byxbee Park in Palo Alto, California:
I had the camera set to record both RAW and JPEG, with JPEG quality set to Extra Fine. The above picture is the unmodified JPEG. Let's compare to the RAW image:
Although it's only really noticable after zooming, the JPEG (right) shows more noise than the RAW (left), particularly along the bird's lower edge and in shadows.
Anyway, here is a processed version of the RAW photo:
Moving on to my second example, here's an Anna's Hummingbird in Henry Coe State Park, California:
The scene was extremely backlit, so the silhouette above is basically what I perceived IRL. That's a JPEG rendering of the unmodified RAW file. By processing the RAW file, we can reveal a lot of color and detail:
I didn't have the camera set to record JPEGs, so in order to make a comparison I converted the unprocessed RAW to a maximum (100)-quality JPEG and tried processing the JPEG:
I was surprised by how much color information the JPEG retained, but the processed JPEG still shows flatter colors on the bird's body, chin, and crown.
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