OpenRAW

Camera companies are good at making cameras and terrible at making software. I and every other digital photographer I know have tried proprietary RAW processing software and have given up because it is slow, klunky, and unintuitive. Adobe is amazingly good at writing software so I use Adobe camera raw to process my raw files. I have no loyalty to Adobe however, I'm loyal to the best product for the job. If someone creates software better than Adobe, that's what I'll use.

That is why an open RAW format is essential. With film I can take a negative regardless of what brand camera it was created with and print it from any brand enlarger. If someone makes a better enlarger, I can switch and use it. I know this is not a perfect analogy, there are different sizes and formats of film and enlargers, but the basic technology is the same.

Digital image files need to be universal in their usability. I want my digital files to be usable in the future. I am beginning to convert all of my RAW files to DNG in the hope that DNG will be universal in the future. This conversion takes time and space, both of which equal money. This is an investment that photographers should not need to make.

Canon and Nikon should give photographers the option of having their camera capture in .DNG raw format or the proprietary raw format.

It's time for camera companies to get with the program. Wouldn't it be a hassle if everyone who drove a Ford could only fill their gas tank at a Ford gas station, and everyone who drove a Toyota needed a Toyota gas station, etc. etc..