PEF or DNG??

But how many keepers?

only about 20% or less I would guess ( I haven't sorted them yet )

It was a Drive By Shooting at night in town, shooting without looking through the view finder so most them will OOF or just nonsense.

I shoot PEF's. I import via Idimager. This program has many import options, one of which is to call Adobe DNG Converter after importing each PEF from the camera. At the same time, or shortly after I set up Idimager to copy the original PEF from the camera to a backup folder. After all this, I have ADC DNG's stored in my library, and original PEF's in my backup folder. Every month or so, I burn the original PEF's to DVD's and clean out the backup folder.

My main reason for the DNG conversion was to eliminate the need for metadata sidecar files. I tag, copyright and describe my images on import, so every PEF had to have it's own metadata (xmp) file. DNG files provide room to store that information, whereas PEF files do not. I was always concerned about a metadata file being separated somehow from the image file, and having to reenter all the metadata.

Dick

I didn't know you needed a sidecar file for PEFs. Another reason not to use them I guess

I'm pretty sure that ALL RAW formats use a sidecar file for metadata. I know the Canon CR2's and the Nikon NEF's and the Panasonic RW2's do...

Dick

It's one of the advantages of DNG that you can save metadata in the DNG file itself. You don't need sidecar files with DNG.

I used to use PEFs with the K10D & K20D because DNGs were not compressed. With the K5 I use DNGs, mainly to avoid having to use xmp files for metadata (it's also useful in the period before RAW converters are updated to recognise new cameras, when DNGs are supported via the @embedded camera profile).

dave

ok the thread's turned into something I won't understand
basically, whichever one I shoot in, when I import the photos into lightroom, if I choose convert to DNG then it'll compress them and reduce the size, no matter if it's DNG or PEF?

Just shot PEFs yesterday, the conversion probably saved some space but the frickin' Lightroom only does things half-arsed!!! I always download and import to a second location at the same time. (always want a backup)
Naturally, I would think that the second copy would be in the format of the imported images ("Copy as DNG")... nope! The backup files are the original PEFs. Maybe that makes sense?

But, if DNG is just as good or better than uncompressed PEFs, why keep them?
Again, I they make me wonder what is being lost in the conversion to make Adobe want to keep the original pre-conversion file in so many cases.

So now I have to do a second conversion of the secondary folder. Quite irritating.
Disk space is cheaper than the time I will be spending on the conversion and the reconversion of the second copies.

I know I'm probably being thick but what is the problem with sidecar files?

I haven't logged any photos recently but when I do the GPS data goes into a sidecar file (at least for PEFs it does - no idea with DNGs).

Don't worry Gwyn, I don't even know, what are sidecar files?

When I shoot PEF as my RAW format, are they the .spi and .spd files created when I start to tweak the originals in Silkypix (Developer Studio 3.0 Free Edition)?

I think the premise is that raw files, .PEF and the like, are 'set in stone' and can't be modified. Or at least, the editing software claims to be 'non-destructive' of the original files.

That being the case, any 'changes' made to these files in editing software like Lightroom can't be saved with the raw file, but the changes need to be saved somewhere.

These changes are saved in a sidecar file.

And the problem is, if you're like I used to be and want to organize your photos after the fact, it is easy to move the image without the sidecar file... With the likes of Lightroom, this is not so much of a problem. If you move a file within Lightroom, the sidecar file goes with it (plus organization from the start is much easier).

When I was using SilyPix, I would often try to move my images and forget about the sidecar files and thus lose all my edits. SilkyPix was also a bit more irritating as the sidecar files were in a subdirectory, so moving all of the corresponding files was more tedious.

Other than the relatively minute disk space they take up, there probably isn't much downside to having the files any more.

Not quite. Same idea though. the .spi and .spd contain edit information you applied to your raw file when you edited it. I don't believe Silkypix has any capability to create information such as tags, captions etc. Note that only Silkypix can read those files... Lightroom for example knows nothing about those files should you decide to change RAW editor some day.

If you add information to your image, eg captions, descriptions, tags (to find your images quickly), copyright information, etc that information will not fit in most RAW files. Programs that add this information called metadata, store the data in a sidecar file usually named the same as the image file, but with an xmp file extension. It's important to keep these two files eg img???.pef and img???.xmp together when moving files to other folders or the metadata will be lost.

The DNG file format has room to store this metadata together with the image data in the same file.

If you don't apply metadata to your images, you don't need to worry about sidecars.

Hope this helps...

Dick

Don't think that you are being the least bit thick...

The only problem I have with sidecar files is keeping them organised and together with the image file, which I find slightly irksome. Since I mainly use Photoshop/LR, I am able to avoid using the xmp sidecars if I use DNG but RAW converters like Silkypix or DXO seem to use sidecars even with DNG.

One advantage of using PEFs is that the original PEF is never modified at all, which is one less chance of corrupting the image file.

dave

Perhaps this is obvious to all concerned, but surely one advantage of DNGs over PEFs is future-proofing? Storing photos in a common (cross-system) format like DNGs makes them less likely to be made obsolete as there's a larger user base and thus more reason for software support in the far future.