I am a RAW shooter. For stills shooting I have often longed for the neat simplicity of a jpeg work flow and nearly achieved one with Fuji cameras, but at the end of the day, the latitude, creative freedom and safety of RAW has always won out.
My images are processed to have a distinctive (and evolving) look, as any long term photographer will develop and that look is based on my processing work flow more than any other factor.
It is absolutely possible to get the image you want in jpeg mode, but when the subject is tricky and the end result requires some caressing, then RAW is the logical starting point and it is easily available to all of us. This image is influenced as much by Lightroom, my programme of choice at the time, as any other factor.
In video though, I intend to be the equivalent of a jpeg shooter, predominantly using the Natural colour profile, with modified settings* on my G9.
There are several reasons for this;.
Video requires more attention pre-shoot. This must be done, so control at capture becomes the mantra and is the main reason I have a dedicated video camera rig. My needs for video are so very different to my stills processes. Consistency is key, not image by image manipulation. This means that with only a little extra effort, most things can be signed off on, then processing is a matter of story creation, not applying needed fixes or aggressive creative changes.
The RAW-like options in most pro-sumer video cameras are only a shadow of the capabilities of true RAW for stills. The best I can potentially do is V-LOG-L which is still not RAW and requires a paid firmware update, otherwise I have the relatively new Cinelike-D, or twitchy and needy HLG, which are only semi Log styles. V-LOG, like many other LOG or semi Log formats is a saturation/contrast reduced look that can take aggressive processing, but also needs consideration at capture and has restrictive software needs, but it is still not RAW. It does however have RAW’s reality of needing to be processed, so shooting V-LOG, Cine-D or any other LOG like format is a liability if you are not skilled in processing them.
With RAW I predominantly fix straightening, cropping, exposure, contrast and colour in my stills, but these should all be already fairly controlled in video, so the effort required to process LOG files is mostly unwarranted for me (at this point).
I am a content creator for my employer not a movie maker. My workflow is not going to allow extended processing times. I may sometimes have to shoot and drop the SD card directly to my boss for immediate use. I need to give them something that is close to done, to reduce the need for on the go fixes while they are making the footage into something useful, often same day. I need to be consistent and predictable.
Natural or the punchier and more distinctive Cine-V on the Panas are pretty much where I want to get and they still provide a little processing room for my own projects. When researching the G9 (or any Panasonic), I was amazed how many serious shooters are more than happy with these “baked in” colour styles for their client, or even their own work. Olympus on the other hand has less of a following for anything pre-set, with only a FLAT profile to extract better results.
By comparison, Jpegs in still photography are rarely close to my ideal.
Lastly, there is something very cool and satisfying about getting the job done and “in the can” as a single process. It feels very “directory” or something.
*For most jobs, I will used -3 Contrast and Sharpness, -0 Noise Reduction and Saturation, switching to -5/-2 for more hard core work when processing will be assumed.