Well, in terms of DSLRs all the major brands (to my knowledge) don't do
this: Pentax, Canon, Nikon, Sony (Minolta). You reference digital backs
for medium format, but I'm not familiar with that space, and assume its
a small fragment of the digital 'photography' marketplace.

This makes a bit more sense to me. Know of any Canon DNG converters
that I could try during the download process? I use the Canon bundled
utilities right now, although I've recently switched to an external
card reader.

Unfortunately I can't see Canon doing this. :(

Agree that it would never be totally orphaned, but lots of better open
source formats in similar situations are on life support...they exist,
but not in any mainstream way. .ogg for example.

I wish I could be optimisitic like yourself, but my IT career
experience tells me the combined market % of all 120 of those companies
doesn't match that of Adobe, and I can't see Adobe continue to flog DNG
indefinitely if there's no h/w vendor support. Adobe would be retarded
to ever drop support for Canon RAW, however, given the 65%+ market
share of cameras... I just don't see any value proposition for DNG
unless the vendors get onboard.

It adds very little to my workflow.  Instead of copying the CR2 files
driectly from my card to my harddrive I use the DNG converter to pull the
CR2 images from the card, and convert and drop them on my hard drive.

Greg

***
[snip]

True. I try to publish the up to date state here:
http://www.barry.pearson.name/articles/dng/safety.htm#completeness

[snip]

[snip]

These are preserved from "3.2" (released in September 2005) onwards.
This needed DNG version 1.1.0.0:
http://www.barry.pearson.name/articles/dng/specification.htm#areas

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/
http://www.barry.pearson.name/articles/dng/

By using the same Adobe DNG Converter you used to archive it!
Bob

Barry Pearson skrev:

I wasn't all that certain i could predict from that, because Canon's
CR2 format is compressed to some extent in and by itself. But you are
right. I could google for the size of a .NEF file from a D70 or a D50,
and multiply it with 1.33, to get a reasonable estimate of the size of
the uncompressed CR2 data.

But yeah. I really should try it for real. At least to know whether
it's worth doing from a workflow point of wiew or not. My workflow
efficiency with RAW:s isn't great as per now, so I suppose I'll have to
improve in that department if I want to shoot mostly RAW and still keep
my job and my family...

I have so far used identical backups the of same archive, not used
different types of archives as backups to one another. I store all my
archives in three places - on the C: drive of my home computer, on an
extra backup disc connected to the same computer, and on portable hard
disc which is normally stored at my workplace, which incidentally is
eighty kilometers away from where I work, so the likelihood of major
accidents affecting both locations is remote. Plus that everything from
like last six months sits on my laptop as well.

So it's not like I have only one archive as per now.  And if I went for
CR2-embedded DNG:s I would store them in exactly as many places as I
store my RAW:s (and original JPEG:s) today. It's more a question of not
spending more megabytes per image than necessary _on a given archive
disk_.

But I have always thought that having backup archives identical to that
of the original, rather than slightly different, would save hassle in
the long run.

Jan Böhme

[snip]

That depends both on what our cameras are and what software we use (now
and in the future).

The "x.y" DNG Converter preserves all the data that ACR "x.y" uses (and
typically more). If a future ACR uses more of the EXIF Makernote, or
other metadata in the case of some cameras, then whether that has been
preserved by earlier versions of the DNG Converter depends on the
camera model as well as which version it was. Here are some clues -
NEF, CR2, PEF, and some others appear to be OK, while some like ORF are
not:
http://www.barry.pearson.name/articles/dng/safety.htm#completeness

I don't know which software products that accept DNG make more use of
the Makernotes or other metadata than ACR. Camera manufacturer's
software typically makes more use of it, but typically doesn't accept
DNG. Ditto Raw Magick, etc.

The worry that some people have is that some future software will be
able to exploit the data that the Adobe DNG Converter doesn't preserve
for some cameras. They worry that this software will be able to give
them better results from today's images, or perhaps give them extra
statistics about which lenses they used, etc.

Personally, I don't expect to spend much time in future trying to
squeeze extra refinements out of today's images. That future software
will probably give better results just using the raw image data (which
is preserved) even without exploiting any such metadata, so will future
printers, etc. But I expect to be spending most of my time on future
images, not today's. Or I'll build today's images into digital "slide"
shows which don't need such refinements. (Pictures-To-EXE just uses
moderate sized JPEGs).

There is a caution here: when Adobe acquired the assets of Pixmantec,
Bibble offered users of Rawshooter Premium a cheap offer. Those who had
switched fully to DNG couldn't use this because Bibble doesn't (yet)
support DNG. There are still a few products "holding out":
http://www.barry.pearson.name/articles/dng/not_yet.htm

The situation improves month by month. I hope that eventually ISO
define a standard archival raw file format, based on DNG. (Rather like
they have defined a standard document format based on PDF). That will
clarify things - one of the most common worries with digital
photography is "what do I archive?"

(I use Pentax, which is one of the cases where the Makernote is
preserved).