OpenRAW

In June 2006, the OpenRAW team sent out printed hardcopies of the 2006 RAW Survey report to the top management of Canon, Nikon and Sony in Japan and a few days ago we received a "thank you" letter from Sony.

The translation follows:

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Sony CS Center
Service Quality Department
Yasuo Takagi, Manager

The letter and the survey report that was sent to our chairman was read
throughly. Our chairman has instructed me to send an answer to you, so
please kindly excuse that I am writing on his behalf.

We have carefully read your "2006 Raw Survey results," which describes the
opinions and preferences of consumers. Thank you very much. We have also
visited the OpenRAW web site using the information you provided. The web
site also displays a great many views and preferences from people in fields
related to photography. We admire your effort to gather so much valuable
information and for making it available on the World Wide Web.

Some of the information is useful for planning and designing new products.
We believe using this information will enable us to create products that
will meet our customers' desires. We have already instructed our production
section to refer to these data. We will make every effort to meet customers'
desires to become their preferred company. We are grateful to you for
sending us such valuable information.

Thank you very much. Please pardon the delay in writing to you.

Thank you for favoring us, and we wish business success and good health for
Mr. Juergen Specht and Mr. Calvin Jones.

Yasuo Takagi

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OpenRAW replied:

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Dear Takagi-san,

Thank you very much for your letter. We hope that the 2006 RAW Survey report
is useful to Sony to understand customers' concerns about future access to
the RAW image files produced by their digital cameras.

Even more, we hope that Sony will see an opportunity to be the first camera
maker that decides to provide open documentation of the RAW file formats
produced by your digital cameras. It is clear from the 2006 RAW Survey that
many photographers, both professionals and dedicated amateurs, are willing
to consider switching camera brands in order to have openly documented RAW
files.

As the new owners of technology first brought to market by Konica-Minolta,
we especially hope that Sony will help to ensure that the owners of older
Konica-Minolta cameras will continue to be able to access and use their RAW
image files.

The OpenRAW initiative is pleased to offer you continuing assistance in
understanding the beliefs and preferences of photographers and others who
use RAW image files as well as assistance in developing a leadership
position in opening RAW image technology.

Thank you again for your kind reply.

Sincerely yours,

Juergen Specht
Calvin Jones
The Open RAW Initiative

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