SUMMARY
Photographer Ben Harvey conducted a month-long experiment shooting exclusively JPEGs on his Sony a7 III, forgoing RAW files and editing. This forced an honest assessment of his in-camera skills, revealing issues with exposure consistency and horizon accuracy. Harvey also found that the Sony a7 III's JPEG output was not ideal, highlighting the importance of camera picture profiles when shooting JPEG-only. The experiment led him to adopt a Panasonic Lumix GX80, whose JPEGs he finds pleasing straight out of camera.
TAKEAWAYS
Shooting JPEG-only for a month revealed photographer Ben Harvey's reliance on post-processing.
Exposure consistency was off by approximately 10%, and handheld horizons were worse than expected.
Camera JPEG output quality is crucial if editing is to be skipped entirely.
Harvey found a Panasonic Lumix GX80 produced pleasing JPEGs, leading him to shoot RAW-less with it.