What do you think is the possibility, when you are choosing and sorting images based on the JPEG previews, that you are going to discard the better-quality image, and keep the lesser-quality one?
When culling shots judging the technical quality based on the embedded JPEGs or uncontrolled RAW conversions instead of RAW, you risk making a mistake, especially with difficult scenes having deep shadows, throwing away perfectly good exposures in favor of the not-so-good – because, in some sense, you are choosing the shots while mislead or even blindfolded.
Let’s take a look at a typical “training” shot for a holiday – noon of a sunny day, blue Ionian sea, bright white limestone pebbles, bushes with dark-green, high-detail leaves (which lose all detail if the shot is underexposed), deep shadows under the bushes. These types of scenes typically have a very wide dynamic range. We will see later, however, that the real range of the shot we are examining is pretty much only 8 EV, if the exposure is technically correct.
