selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Don't you think that "no ability to change it later" is a bit overstated?

You can always edit the resulting JPEG. But it's a pretty good idea to convert it to a 16-bit TIFF first to avoid damage from banding and compression from saving a JPEG in the middle of an edit session.

The only thing you can't do later is recover lost highlight and shadow information. You just need to be a little more careful with the exposure with JPEG than with raw. You don't want to blow the highlights in the JPEG but the raw file gives you only about one stop more latitude on the high side.

There may be nothing lost (that you care about) when the camera creates the JPEG for a scene whose dynamic range is not wide, especially if you use Auto D-Lighting or similar camera settings.

Editing the TIFF, you can still change the color balance, modify the tone curve and do all of the steps you would normally do in your raw editor after the initial Bayer conversion.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

Another thing you can't do later with a JPEG is correct a WB which is far off.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

You can't correct gross underexposure either. As I said, you need to be more careful with the exposure to get a good JPEG.

There are lot's of JPEG presets in the camera that can make editing of the JPEG/TIFF difficult. You should not do any sharpening in the camera either.

But the point is that, once you are looking at the image in your editor, the raw data has already been converted into a 16-bit image or you wouldn't be able to see it.

The raw conversion itself is a trivial step or your camera would not be able to do it on the fly every time you click the shutter.