From Infra Photography to Epiphany

My journey with infra photography a few years ago when I got the R72 filter for my Ricoh GRiii. I've only done BW infrareds with it however, and those had mixed feviews from the people I've shown them to. The images coming from my 590nm Canon 1200D however, have had overly positive reviews.

Canon 1200D, converted to 590nm + Tamron 17-35mm f2.8-4, pano stitched from 6 vertical images

The 590nm process has had quite a learning curve to it; primarily what exposure to shoot, and what editing to use. At the moment I've settled at a +1/3 EV and a custom preset in CaptureOne. Building the preset is likely a very personal matter since you're trying to find what look you'd like to create.

The images coming from the 1200D are hardly perfect. The output is an 18MP file which suffers from all kinds of defects. Sometimes the sky is gray, for reasons I don't understand as of yet, and sometimes you can see hot spots. But in spite of those technical defects, I've had only positive feedback from others. I've read many times that it's not the camera but the photographer that creates the image, but only now am I starting to understand and internalize it.

In a similar fashion, I realized that no one gave me more compliments after I switched from the entry level, 26MP, EOS RP to the pro-level, 50MP, medium format Fuji GFX 50s. A model who's been shooting with me for years now in fact told me that she only saves the images I send her on to her phone; in other words, she never even had the potential to admire the full potential of the GFX 50s. Another model was ecstatic by images I sent her from the RP after I had sold the GFX 50s: she didn't notice any difference in the file quality. In both of these cases, thy were looking at the image, not the file. So why bother with a big and heavy set up when no one will see the difference? Is all the extra cost and weight worth it for me to pixel peep during editing?