I have found this to be quite interesting and decided to do another image with colour in case any differences showed up there.

The chosen subject was a toasted bacon and tomato sandwich ( Duncan influence here ) .... but .... I ate it during the set up. :D
Moral appears to be have a good breakfast before using food as a subject.

So I decided to look a DP Review as now no bacon left.

As the timeline of digital development I looked at and compared the D100, D70, and D50 as they are all around 6 megapixels.

There is in each case a difference between RAW and JPEG but as time has moved on so the differences have become less but it is still there.
In the case of the D100 ( Announced Feb02 ) the sharper Raw conversion is put down to the greater processing power of a PC.
The D70 ( Announced Jan04 ) converted RAW image shows greater contrast and colour saturation than straight JPEG.
The D50 ( Announced April05 ) shows little difference.

The D2X ( dream machine ) converted RAW appears to show better contrast and colour saturation than JPEG.

D100 review http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond100/page11.asp
D70 review http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond70/page11.asp
D50 review http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond50/page12.asp
D2X review http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond2x/page13.asp

Don

I tried my own test but just for sharpness. I used a recent Grays of Westminster price list as it was the first thing printed to hand.

Using a tripod in conjunction with self timer mode to avoid any shake, no flash and Nikon Capture (NC) as RAW convertor.

50mm f1.8 on D2X set for Aperture priority f8 and ISO 100 to produce RAW and JPEG fine (opimum quality)

Pic 1 shows full EXIF from NC and the focus point.
Pic 2 shows JPEG conversion of full photo in fine (otimum quality)
Pic 3 shows NC Conversion of full photo NC4.04
Pic 4 shows JPEG 100% crop around focus area
Pic 5 shows NC 100% crop around focus area

Please note, in camera sharpness set to medium low and full photo shots are set to JPEG level 9 to get under 341kB filesize.
Continued...

Here is a composite of the two 100% crops, are the labels correct? My eyes are getting tried after a long day in Central London, again!

I thought there was a big difference but not so sure - tired eyes!

I'd put the jpg ahead? Not much in it anyway... I'll stick to jpg for the time being.
cheers,
Andy

When I did the composite I thought JPEG left and RAW right but got dazed and swapped them over. I am now convinced RAW left and JPEG right, contrary to the labels!

There is not much in it but when you compare the relevant images on DPreview differences look about the same.

Please note, photos on post 12 are faithful and correct.

So it does appear that as digital has moved on the differences have as good as disapeared. Would probably get the same result from the new D200.

Curses this new kit is good.

Don

Thanks for confirming my results. Many have made the point that Raw is clearly sharper than jpeg. I've been puzzled by this as my tests always showed hardly any difference. On another test I did the jpeg showed a slight cluster of a few pixels on a bright highlight.

FYI the needle on the left was the RAW version.

The logic of the jpeg encoder is to first compress colour and preserve brightness and resolution. Then progressively reduce the number of brightness levels and resolution as the compression factor is increased.

It would be interesting to compare the difference in colour on RAW and fine jpeg.

Does that mean it's back to a toasted BLT test then ???:D
I'll show your post to the management !!

Don

LOL Don

See if you can get the shot before sinking your teeth into it.

Or you could do a "before and after". :D