To DNG or not

[DierkHaasis]

Originally Posted by AndrewRodney

I don't want to risk losing any of the original rendering instructions with double the number of files I'd have to keep track of.

Exactly why I prefer NEF.

[AndrewRodney]

Yes, the DNG spec is evolving and anyone who wishes to support it, either older or newer versions will be able to do so since its an open spec, just like Tiff.

Corrupted Raws are more common than I'd like, primarily due to write errors (the cards used, how they are formatted etc play a role). Its possible that nothing will recover the data, but you have a much better chance of doing this FROM the card (obviously before format) than after writiting it to another media. My friend Greg Gorman lost what he thought was a half a 8 gig card from and was able to get them recovered by sending the card to Sandisk. Obviously he knew he had an issue before formatting the card!

What we really need are the cameras to write DNG, not proprietary CRW's or NEFs. Everytime a new camera comes to market (and both Canon and Nikon have just done so), users may have to wait months for any 3rd party converter to support the use of this new proprietary format, simply because each company has to hack the proprietary format to process it. It doesn't protect the manufacturers in the long run, only causes problems for end users. Of course they don't do this with their JPEGs for obvious reasons. So why the Raws?

[DierkHaasis]

Yes, if DNG was the camera format - a full DNG! - everything would change. Like many others I am highly doubtful this will happen, especially not with Canon, Nikon, most probably Sony, Olympus and Pentax. Let's include Casio since they seem to be the up and coming camera manufacturer.

Neither Hasselblad nor Leica are big enough players to have any impact [BTW, at least Leica's brand of DNG is a bit dodgy]; and the moment Adobe gets powerful enough to pressure their format unto Nikon and Canon, I will most likely lay down my cameras for a fork and a torch.

Another very viable road would be for the camera manufacturers to openly document their own formats. No giving up of property, no barring progress, no closing off of any future developments by committing to one format that may one day be obsolete [this applies to any format but I am thinking here of DNG].

[John_S_Chapman]

I started to convert to DNG after using Lightroom for a couple of months. I must admit I was initially a bit wary, but it's now part of my workflow. I notice that even Capture One will support the DNG format with their version 4 software. I don't know how you archive, but you could always keep a copy of the original file as part of you archiving system.

John C

[MikeA]

I think I'm with Noel on this.

From my point of view, the ability to decode RAW files is built into many third party non-canon software packages, as well as the built in abilities of the computer OS's themselves. I'm basically having trouble imagining a time when all that capability might be removed.

Even if commercial offerings decided to dump it, there are open source efforts like DCRAW that really have no reason to remove capability, and will remain stored in source form in public archives. This software is a public record of the RAW formats and methods required to convert a RAW file into common image formats.

Wikipedia entry fro DCRAW: dcraw - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think our .CRW's and .CR2's are going to be usable for a very long time...

Mike