I can't help but think that Olympus Viewer 2 is going to behave as any other RAW editor. An unedited RAW file will not be the same as the in camera jpeg. [/url]
Barrie
That's really not true. There is no technical reason why a RAW editor couldn't have the exact same algorithm as the in-camera engine. Third party RAW editor like Adobe Camera Raw can't do it because camera makers don't reveal their algorithms, and reverse engineering them would not be permitted.
Note that Olypmus Viewer has two modes. One is just like any other RAW editor. The other mode is specifically designed to be just like the in-camera JPG engine. I ran a few more tests, and it's actually very very close when the sRGB color space is used. It looks like either the camera or the software is getting the Adobe RGB color space wrong under some circumstances, however. Which is not a big deal. I just saw a posting on Steves Digicams where someone pointed out a minor omission: Viewer does not offer the lowest JPG compression (highest quality) that the camera offers, which is a strange omission but not a huge deal.
Overall, I am satisfied that I can recreate in-camera jpgs if I shoot RAW. (Personally, I would never shoot in JPG only mode, and RAW+JPG mode is cumbersome and wastes a ton of space.)