Dynax Digital Forums

funny you should bring this up

i myself have been considering converting to dng just for the fact that it will take up less space on the HD

my concern was never a loss of quality just the time it would take to convert, but i have found something very interesting.

I have been shooting cRaw with my a700 for a few weeks and have been pleased with the results, I haven't noticed any loss of quality vs. Raw

I did notice today when I converted identical images taken within a second of each other that the cRaw file that was originally 12.17MB converted to dng and ended up as 12.2MB, so no file size savings, however the same identical photo shot 1 sec later that was a Raw file originally 18.01MB converted to dng was only 9.5MB

somewhat interesting, so it would make better since to shoot full Raw and convert to dng than to shoot cRaw and leave it be or even shoot cRaw and then convert.

I may be changing my workflow to include, a) switching back to full Raw and b) converting to dng on import.

thoughts?
anyone want to also do this to see if you get the same results?

I use an a350 and an a700 ,I've never had a problem converting raw with the a700 but with the a350 I had to use image data raw converter until I read an article about DNG converter and now use this for importing the a350 files. I know you are trying to save space on the hard drive so why not convert to DNG and process in whatever software you use then discard DNG and keep the raw or vice verce I have to say also that I as yet have not noticed any great deal of image loss in DNG and the article written by MARTIN EVENING in the book "ADOBE PHOTOSHOP for PHOTOGRAPHERS" actually suggests that one day all imports will be done using DNG to save costs in developing formats for raw by camera manufacturers and various models. DNG is free to download and can be used by most makes of camera to date.

My workflow:

ARW -> DNG
DNG -> Apple Aperture

I only shoot full RAW. DNG format saves a lot of HD space and I haven't notice any difference between DNG and ARW files. For conversion I use Adobes DNG Converter. I like it, because it also let you change the naming of the files. Program is easy to use.

kurt

Is is true that the Camera manufacturers want to keep their own proprietary formats as they have different algorithms for manipulating raw data?.. I must admit that I have not bothered to look at .dng.....john

Hi keithf,

There should be a Adobe Camera Raw installed with the Elements (includes to the package). I am not a user of Elements, but the problem might be that ACR does not have support fro A350 ... I can not say.

Here is a link to upgrade Camera Raw.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=40&platform=Windows

Just make sure that the version is highest possible, but also compatible with your version of Elements. One option is to download a Adobe DNG Converter, convert the images to DNG format and then open those converted images in Elements.

Hope this helps,

kurt

To me, the problem is compatibility. In a few years time I won't be using XP, I just downloaded LightRoom 2.7, and ARW is of this generation of software... on this generation of computer. For as long as I keep this combination, it should be fine. But the keepers are converted to full-size jpg anyway. Though, I should start keeping a separate dng store.

As for long-term storage, currently I'm using DVDs and an external 1TB hard drive. For the 'keepers', I should consider dng and use a separate 1TB hard drive, to ensure redundancy or an off-site system (like Ubuntu One and / or DropBox)... hmm... food for thought.