Wayne Larmon wrote:
[snip]
IMO, DNG is a non-starter until Canon and Nikon get on board.
DNG has already started! What mainly matters for any photographer is whether the SOFTWARE they use accepts DNG, not whether their cameras output it. After all, hardly any of the photographers already using DNG have cameras that output DNG.
Otherwise it serves no purpose whatsoever. Because (for better or
worse), RAW file formats are proprietary and not documented, such
that Thomas Knoll himself reccomends to never erase your original
RAW files (because he can't guarantee that everything got converted
to DNG.)
That was probably advice from the first half of last year. Things changed with version 3.x. The preservation of data from the original raws depends on the camera model, (and improves over time). CR2, NEF, PEF, etc, have their EXIF Makernote preserved in DNGPrivateData. Some manufacturers' raw formats are not handled so well.
(I would expect Adobe to play safe with their statements in case they get sued! But photographers don't need to do everything that Adobe tells them to do).
AFAIK, every RAW converter that can read DNG can also read the
original RAW format.
Not true. Certainly ACR 2.4, which is the latest (& last) raw converter plugin for Photoshop CS, only supports about half as many cameras via the native raw files as it does via DNG. I believe Silkypix can handle DNG more comprehensively too. I don't know about others. This will improve over time.
And some RAW converters can't read DNG. So
what reason is there to use DNG?
[snip]
It depends on your workflow and the tools you use. The situation changes month by month, with the advantages in a DNG-based workflow gradually improving. (It is still early days - it was only launched nearly 17 months ago). Some people would get no advantage yet. Some people couldn't fit it into their workflow because they use currently software that doesn't accept DNG. Some people get so much advantage that they never even copy their original raws to the PC. Here are some separate reasons why different people currently use DNG:
1. DNGs are often smaller than the original raw files, because DNG uses a good lossless compression. That matters to some people.
2. Some people use Photoshop CS and don't want to upgrade to CS2, yet have a more recent camera which they want to handle with ACR. They can convert to DNG and open them in ACR 2.4 under CS. About 50 cameras can be handled this way, and the number increases every few months.
3. I think one of the "killer" reasons in future will be the ability to hold lots of metadata within the DNG files. I hold "rights management" metadata, such as copyright, name, website, etc. Plus "asset management" metadata, such as information about the shoot, and about individual images. I can search of this, and in future will probably need this for asset management generally, which is why I am putting it into the DNGs now while it is a manageable problem. (ACR also holds its edits and settings in the DNGs, instead of sidecars or a database, which makes file management a bit easier). A number of asset management products support XMP-within-DNG, and the number will slowly increase.
4. Some people are concerned about archival formats. That probably matters less to Nikon and Canon users than for the "minority" makes. But it will become more of a problem in future. For example, new software products often start by supporting a limited range of cameras, typically the recent ones, and in future DNG may become the way for those future products to handle 2005/2006's cameras. People concerned with long-term archiving typically want proper documentation of the formats they archive, and DNG is pretty well alone in having that. And the inclusion of metadata ("3") obviously makes archiving more compehensive.
5. There are trivial reasons such as the ability to "recover edges".
There may be other reasons too. Advantages increase over time. "1" applied from September 2004. "2", "3", and "4", became useful about May 2005. "5" appeared just two or three months ago. The number of (non-Adobe) products that support DNG in some way increases month by month too. At the end of February 2005 it was about 15. At the end of April 2005 is was about 25. Now it is probably about 100, although no one really knows.
--
DNG is better than sliced bread.
DNG images don't become toast.
