To be clear, they default to JPEG for the image preview on the monitor (LCD screen). Whenever viewing an image on a professional camera, you’re always seeing the resulting JPEG image.
The underlying data is always captured as a RAW file, and only discarded if you’ve configured the camera to only store the JPEG image (discarding the original RAW file after processing).
> Whenever viewing an image on a professional camera
Viewing any preview image on any camera implies a debayered version: who says is it JPEG-encoded - why would it need to be? Every time I browse my SD card full of persisted RAWs, is the camera unnecessarily converting to JPEG just to convert it back to bitmap display data?
> The underlying data is always captured as a RAW file, and only discarded if you’ve configured the camera to only store the JPEG image (discarding the original RAW file after processing).
Retaining only JPEG is the default configuration on all current-generation Sony and Canon mirrorless cameras: you have to go out of your way to persist RAW.
The underlying data is always captured as a RAW file, and only discarded if you’ve configured the camera to only store the JPEG image (discarding the original RAW file after processing).