Are you using DNG?

[JohnT]

I've known about DNG for a couple of years now and read about converting raw files to DNG in Photoshop User Magazine yesterday. I'm wondering if anyone around here is converting their files for long-term archival purposes.

[jeffkohn]

The only reason I could see for converting to DNG is if the version of Photoshop you're using doesn't support the raw files from your camera, but the latest DNG converter does. For instance a CS2 user with a D300 wouldn't be able to directly open NEF's in Bridge/ACR, but they could download the latest DNG converter from Adobe and convert their NEF's to DNG's, and then open the DNG's in CS2.

But converting to DNG in the belief that the DNG format will be around longer than Nikon or Canon raw formats seems a bit silly to me. There's no reason to think DNG will be around longer than NEF despite what Adobe might try to say.

[ChuckW]

I hesitate to even reply here because this will probably turn into more of an argument than a discussion! But, having said that, I will go on record saying that I save in the DNG format. While I agree with what was said above that Canon's and Nikon's formats will probably be around as long as Adobe's I think that DNG has a couple of advantages. One, the file sizes are actually smaller than the Canon raws that I convert. And, two, if changes are made to the raw file a record of those changes are contained in the DNG file itself, not a separate side-kick file.
If someone were extremely concerned about archival issues they could keep both the original raw file, plus a DNG conversion!

[CaptainTom]

I have to convert my 40D RAW files to DNG in order to work on CS2.

[WLPelzmann]

I've been using DNG for new files, basically the same reason as Chuck.
I'm not concerned about format longenvity, or slightly smaller files.

I use Lightroom, so all raw edit instructions are stored within the DNG file, rather than separate XMP sidecar files - just a cleaner way to do things & so far I am not aware of any negatives.

[Duffy Pratt]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

But converting to DNG in the belief that the DNG format will be around longer than Nikon or Canon raw formats seems a bit silly to me. There's no reason to think DNG will be around longer than NEF despite what Adobe might try to say.

The problem with the Canon and Nikon formats is that they differ for every single camera model. The argument for DNG is that it is at least consistent. So while Canon's CR suffix may be around for a long time, its less clear to me that support for, e.g., the 10D will continue to be supported by different editors. Having said that, I still haven't converted anything over to DNG, because I don't see any compelling evidence that it will become THE standard.

I recently threw away a bunch of 5 1/4 inch floppies that had some old word perfect documents on them. I don't know if there was anything on them worth keeping, but I doubted it was going to be worth the considerable effort it would take to find out. I imagine there will be a bunch of people who are in the same position with old RAW files in 10-15 years.

Duffy

[iCe]

I've thought about it but haven't done so yet.

[jeffkohn]

The problem with the Canon and Nikon formats is that they differ for every single camera model. The argument for DNG is that it is at least consistent.

Maybe not as consistent as you think, DNG has a facility for storing camera-proprietary metadata. In fact ACR has actually had to be updated in the past to support cameras that produced DNG in-camera as a native format.

Maybe Canon users have some cause for concern, given that company's track record with backwards compatibility (sorry, couldn't resist ), but I'm pretty confident that the NEF format will be supported for quite some time to come. The difference in NEF's from one model to the next are pretty minor, and the image data itself is essentially in TIFF format.

At one time I did consider DNG's for space savings, since my D2x had no lossless compression option. But to save disk space would mean discarding the NEF's, and even though ACR is my primary converter there are other converters I occasionaly might want to use that support NEF but not DNG.

To me the sidecars are actually a benefit, especially since they're XML and can be viewed/edited with a simple text editor, but I guess I can see how some people might not want to keep track of another file.

[johnastovall]

Every shoot I take with the M8 is a DNG.