I can't imagine that any professional organization would consider Nikon DSLR's in this day and age. It is a dying company, and the encryption scam is just another way to increase cash flow. From their shrunken sensor strategy, to their "pay for raw" mentality, and their complex and restrictive policy for repairs, they have slipped from a position of prominence to that of point-n-shoot mediocrity. Every major image organization in the world uses CS. The only folks who don't are primarily hobbyists. And, the reason they don't use it is generally financial. This poor strategy choice by Nikon is a great opportunity for another company to jump in and assume Nikon's old position of prominence. Here comes Samsung (or Kodak or ????!). Enough for now, I have some telephone poles to tend to...
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Not to mention combining differently-processed versions of the same image with different tonalities to increase apparent dynamic range, or different white balances for different parts of the image, etc.
If photographers had had the option to process the same roll of film multiple times, I'm sure many of them would have exercised it. But it's a bad analogy—a raw is much more like a negative than it is like unprocessed film. Within fairly narrow limits, film development is either right or wrong. Raw allows very many equally valid interpretations of the same image.
Saving a TIFF and throwing away the raw is like saving a decent lab print and throwing away the neg. Saving a JPEG and throwing away the raw is like saving a print from Joe's One-Hour Photo and Bait and throwing away the neg....
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
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A note about metadata encryption: A firestorm of controversy recently erupted when Thomas Knoll of Adobe accused Nikon of encrypting the white balance data in the D2X and D2Hs cameras, thus preventing Adobe from fully supporting these cameras. I cracked this encryption on April 15, and updated dcraw.c and parse.c on April 17. So "dcraw -w" now works correctly with all Nikon cameras.
This is not a new problem. Phase One, Sony, Foveon, and Canon all apply some form of encryption to their raw files. Dcraw decodes them all -- you can easily find decryption code by searching for the ^ operator.
Compression is not encryption. Phase One and Sony do encryption only. Kodak does compression only. Canon, Nikon, and Foveon compress the image data and encrypt some of the metadata.
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Interesting perspective from a developer. Thoughts?
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
> I still don't think they do..or ever will be able to process
> as complex algorithms as efficiently as a powerful desktop ??
Kinda like saying a Ford Festiva will never be as fast as a GT40. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] As you are saying, a physically small computer, working off a small battery, will never have the processing power of a desktop machine that has the luxury of AC line power. Having said that, in-camera JPG's are getting pretty darn good. Canon 20D can attest to that. And for the bulk of what I do (racing) I shoot JPG's and can make prints as big as posters. That's even after one round of mild manipulation in Photoshop of the JPG.
Having said that, not sure I'd want to do product photography, weddings or portraits in JPG.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
The camera is already processing the RAWs much, much faster than the desktop (so fast that you probably do not realise it -- it starts writing the jpeg immediately...!). I think the issue is that most shooters don't want the camera to apply a generic sharpening algorithm and ideally you want to apply sharpening to a 16-bit image (Lab colour space, etc, etc...). Hence the camera's jpeg can never match the quality of a RAW image, even when your final target after post-processing is an 8-bit jpeg...
But speedwise? The camera is plenty fast. The devices it writes to OTOH...
--
Rune
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Re: How would you react to Canon RAW \"encryption\"?
Nikon's breaking of the required components into multiple, separately priced and purchased items is indeed tedious. That approach to meeting a psychological price point and a desired bottom line simultaneously may assist them in getting the next sale, but is not conducive to repeat business. At least, that's how it worked with me.
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Canon...made their money on the software when you bought the camera. They don't have to worry about piracy...no licensing costs for activation schemes..they sell the bundle.
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A good point, and a good approach. There's certainly nothing wrong with charging money for software. Obviously though, the feasibility of charging for it is proportionate to its utility, quality, and relevance.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
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