Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/04/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]This is a little off topic for film-using Leica photographers, but will be of interest to many of you. As we know most high-end digital cameras give photographers the option of recording their images in a proprietary raw format. This format saves all of the information recorded by the camera's sensor. Leica, to its credit, has adopted the Adobe DNG format for its Digital Modul R. Unlike the formats used by other manufacturers this is an openly documented format. This means that Adobe has published the exact specifications for extracting the information in these camera files. The other manufacturers, whose names may or may not start with N or C use their own, partially secret, raw file format. The problem is that they often do not disclose how to fully decode your image files. In some cases even Photoshop can't extract all of the data. Also at least one manufacturer has dropped support for their earlier digital cameras. Can you imagine if you suddenly couldn't read your five-year old negatives? Granted film users don't have this problem but if you shoot digital it is a serious concern. Anyway there is a new initative to pressure camera manfacturers to fully document ther raw file formats. This can be found at http://www.openraw.org/ They also have a press release that goes into more detail at http://www.openraw.org/press/ Other than being on some mailing lists where this is being discussed I have no personal connection with this initiative. I do think it is important. Mike Durling -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .