RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs As noted above, the Sony NEX-5 produces fairly sharp, detailed in-camera JPEGs. However, quite a bit more detail can often be obtained from carefully processing RAW files ...

They also increase the size of the camera itself, diluting the main advantage that SLDs hold over their SLR brethren -- and that would hardly fit with Sony's design ethos for the NEX-series cameras.