The problem is quite dramatically one...
The problem is quite dramatically one of persistence. We want our photographs to persist and be useable in 5 or 10 or even more years. That's why we stored our negatives or dia positives in a safe place to preserve the best quality.
Several years ago 256 colours were all we could expect from a normal display. File formats limited you to storing a reduced colour palette. Today this has changed and in 10 years this will have changed again.
Today we face a few hard choices:
- Keep the open interchangable format and economical JPEG (and loose the ability to use future hardware that's no longer limited to 8-bit or sRGB/Adobe RGB colourspace to it's full potential). This JPEG may or may not contain information about the original image (maker notes).
- or choose the extremely wasteful 16 bit/colour TIFF at the expense of having to buy new harddrives every few months and have large backups on DVDs. Still the problem of the maker notes isn't solved with this format.
- or trust the manufacturers to keep supporting their RAW format for every new computer and operating system generation coming.
Has any of them tried to run a 16 bit Windows 3.1 image editing program on a current Windows XP? I bet not, with Microsoft Longhorn around the corner, Mac OSX and Linux making inroads on the monopoly it is hardly believable or even feasible in my eyes to have that much trust in any one manufacturer. - I still have to see any official RAW file support from any manufacturer for Linux which is a shame because it's the only current operating system that will probably stay consistent from an application programmers point of view over the next decade.
One or more of the current DSLR's manufacturers may even cease to exist in the not to far future. In itself this wouldn't mean that their cameras are less capable but only if the RAW format is well documented the customers would be able to enjoy them and the pictures they have taken for the forseable future.
So either the camera manufacturer is capable of earning the trust of the consumer and the only realistic way any manufacturer would be capable to do so would be by opening his RAW format to the public.
regards
Karl Günter Wünsch
As a DNG user, I agree, that DNG is a great alternative to...
As a DNG user, I agree, that DNG is a great alternative to other raw, but unfortunatelly there is currently no way to create DNG on a Linux box. This is a Problem.
As an open UNIX-like architecture it will should stay consistent and compatible for years to to come, without even thinking of the hardware Platform that is used.
It should be an important afford to create an format that is fully supported on ANY platform, at best with an open sourcecode. As long as there is no 100% portable version of the converter or a free implementation of the conversion software, DNG poses no alternative to a true openRaw format.
As long DNG is not FREE as in FREEDOM it is nothing we should be pleased with.
Karl, you describe 3 options, based on JPEG, TIFF, or native...
Karl, you describe 3 options, based on JPEG, TIFF, or native Raw.
I use a 4th option. I convert to DNG, using the free converter. For my camera, with the photo-editor I use, it is as good as the native Raw format, (but much smaller!), and I fully expect to be able to access it in 5 or 10 years time. Even if only to convert to another open standard, if there is one. (I am confident that a converter from DNG to any new standard would become available).
Unfortunately for Linux users, the DNG Converter comes in Windows & Mac flavours. I don't know what the implications for Linux are.