KS-2 DNG vs PEF

Hi Guys

Just got my first Pentax DSLR.

I've shot in RAW on mu Fuji bridge for a long time and never really questioned the format but within the KS-2 I can use either DNG or PEF - both are recognised by my usual software. I run Adobe Creative Suite 5 - so I use Bridge and Photoshop for my processing (though I am thinking about buying Lightroom as everyone seems to love it and it's quite cheap) before I digress in to 'should I get lightroom' I'll ask my question.

Are there any pros and cons of DNG or PEF?

All I can see from fiddling is PEF has better compression, but maybe I am missing something.

That's essentially it, compression.
I choose DNG because it is the de facto standard and is always going to be supported in the future. PEF could become obsolete with fewer and fewer applications recognising it.
I get round the size issue by ruthlessly culling the negatives after I've finished processing.
BTW, Lightroom is definitely worth the money

+1

Phil

There doesn't seem to be any visible difference in the end result, so for the reasons stated above I use DNG. Having said that, I normally shoot in JPEG.

DNG That's for me. As above.

DNG it is then based on the above but I think PEF has pretty good uptake as even Google Photos recognises it.

PEF user here. There doesn't appear to be a downside with obsolescence since there's a free DNG coder from Adobe that will convert PEF to DNG if your need to.

Do you find there's an upside to using PEF?

Pentax are one of the few cameras that can use DNG so take advantage of the fact.
CHEERS Vic.

Today PEF has support but what about tomorrow?
What you could do, and I might try this myself, is use PEF and get Adobe to convert the precious ones to DNG for archiving.

http://photographyconcentrate.com/should-you-convert-dng/

AH, great minds
I haven't done any tests but I suspect PEFs are faster to capture and to work with.
Generally, compression and decompression is faster than writing to disk.

Time to move on from all those Floppies! Get a computer with a HDD or SSD

That's just nonsense To Compress 512MB of Data takes about 30 secs. and it still has to be written to disk,

To write 512MB takes 1 to 5 secs.

Benchmarks:
http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/4993/24/intel-core-i3-4330--i5-4440-review-affor...


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Steady on Algi; it's not nonsense, that's why compression exists and why data communicating is so fast. However, it remains to be seen whether in the real word of cameras optimised for proprietary compression, not bloody winzip and SSDs (which I have), dealing with actual pictures, the results will be so clear-cut.
I am happy to be proved wrong with relevant test both capturing and saving an image and reading it into Lightroom.
It was just a thought. I'm pretty sure I've noticed PEFs opening quicker in the past
And full-sized JPEGs of course are near instantaneous to display, but RAWs and TIFFs are very sluggish. Remember, once opened, a JPEG is as big as any other comparable file, so why would it be so much more responsive to open and save?

I always shoot DNG raw, if I remember correctly when I got my original K-m I brought a copy of Coral PaintShop and it didn't support PEF, so I had to convert the images all the time.

Very true, I went to a training day with Gavin Hoey, through out the day we took pictures that Gavin used the images during the theory parts, he commented that Pentax and one other manufacture supports DNG straight from the camera.