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But for a non-tweaked process, I really expected the camera to do a similarly good job

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How long does it take to process one photo?
Slightly variable, but I just now timed one at 36 seconds

See, that's why the camera doesn't do a good job at it. If the camera did that good a job internally, you could take one photo every 36 seconds.

To be truthful, I'm surprised some of these cameras are as quick as they are, especially the newest canons. The chips they've got with built-in JPG encoding/decoding do a surprisingly quick job. Well, now we know one of the reasons why.