Canon Says G7's JPEG Mode On Par With RAW

[Leecher]

Canon's PowerShot G7 doesn't feature raw mode support and that upset quite a few people when it was released just a little while ago. We've also been wondering why Canon would seemingly go out of its way to not include a feature that many higher-end digital cameras just throw in nowadays. The official response from Canon is that by increasing the amount of megapixels in the camera, the amount of noise per pixel increased to such an extent that their was little difference in quality between JPEG compression and raw mode. Straight from Canon gatekeeper Chuck Westfall:

The net result is that even if the G7 offered raw image capture...there would be no discernible improvement in image quality compared to...superfine JPEG mode.

Conspiracy theorists say that Canon actually removed raw support so as not to cannibalize sales of its digital SLRs. But with the recent post by the New York Times' David Pogue that proved (anecdotally, at least) that people cannot even tell the difference between all those megapixels, maybe Canon is trying to make a statement. – Nicholas Deleon
Why Canon's PowerShot G7 lacks 'raw' support [Cnet News.com]
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