RAW+

Thanks Pete for the info, most appreciated

Wow - loads of useful info - thanks to all.

Re DNG - is this a 'universal' RAW format? I think it's an Adobe feature and if so I guess it must be?

Can I convert PEF RAW using Photoshop?

I'll probably use DNG and buy bigger cards - Mmmm - any ideas which cards are best for RAW. I currently use Lexar 133x for JPEGs.

Cheers

John

Yes, DNG is supposed to be a universal RAW format.

I don't know if PS can convert. If not, simply use Adobe DNG Converter.

Your Lexar cards are fine for RAW as well as JPEG, as long as they're big enough. Get whatever size you like. Sandisk Extreme III and the better (white) Toshiba cards are also good and fast.

Unless like Shim you want to do something with the RAWs on someone elses computer straight away, I suggest shooting PEF and converting to compressed DNG afterwards. Otherwise you'll be spending more on memory cards and hard drives than you need to.

If shooting DNG, you might want to do a conversion process anyway - to convert to compressed DNG.

You can convert them with the newer photoshops not sure about the older ones.
With photoshop you get Adobe camera raw. you can maybe set it up like that it imports and convert pef from you card to highly compress DNG on your harddisk. If you are also going to save your DNG files from the camera straight to your pc it will fill up quite hard to, it really saves 55% on file size or maybe even more if your pc compress them into DNG.

to go just a bit from the topic, how do TIFF and camera raw compare?
can i still play with the white balance in TIFF without downgrading the image quality?

TIFF can be almost as good as RAW in that way, but TIFF files are larger than losslessly compressed DNG.

I've just downloaded a 60 day demo of Nikon CaptureNX2 link. It's supposed to be separate from Nikon cameras and I already have Nikon scanner software on my computer. Very impressive piece of software, but sadly it won't read DNG... so much for a universal negative format. It can still do a hell of a lot with jpegs though and possibly tiffs.

Bigger cards are not a problem, but HD storage could be so if you specifically don't need DNG's PEF will save HD space. I need DNG's because I have programs that won't read PEF.

You have to be very careful with things becoming quickly obsolete with computers.... stuff gets dropped overnight. I used to back up to various tape drives, SCSI etc. I've still got the tapes, but might as well throw them away because I can't access them now. Luckily they were only backups . I now use DVD-RAM cartridges and HD's, but DVD-RAM isn't anywhere near as popular as it should have been and Panasonic are slowly dropping it.

shim

I always use TIFF for scans and then ZIP them up if I want to keep them. They usually compress quite well.

shim

Well lets test the file size it's easely done right

Camera Pentax K10D set on manual mostly white/creme colour in the photo.
PEF = 8,15 MB
DNG = 16,1 MB
JEPG *** = 1,84 MB

Used lightroom 2.2 to get to photo from the card and compressed them to DNG, works only with raw so JEPG stays the same.
PEF > DNG = 6,94 MB
DNG > DNG = 7,14 MB
Quite strange, they are close together but it seems that PEF might have lost some detials somewhere or not?

Now opend them in Photoshop CS4 extended and saved them to TIFF with zip compression.
PEF > TIFF = 8,71 MB
DNG > TIFF = 8,86 MB
PEF > DNG > TIFF = 8,71 MB
DNG > DNG > TIFF =8,86 MB
Off these I can say that Lightroom did a good job and that no noticable data has been lost by the compression done by it, I hope you think the same.
The camera Probable do something with the PEF file, I don't know to be honest, it do offer a good compression compared to DNG (by the camera).

So you're not saving any space by converting to TIFF and zipping.

I'd rather just save the Compressed DNGs or PEFs. I can always convert to TIFF any time with Silkypix if I ever need TIFF.

In photoshop you have the option to chose an image compresion, zip was among them but the file will say TIFF and can be opend as a normall photo.
You can also chose LZW (don't know what that is and JPEG as compresion.

I've winrar so will zip and rar them on the highest compresion okay and see what it does.

Anyway, I want to keep RAW files in case I change my mind about the processing. There's more to it than white balance. I couldn't undo a lot of the things I do in Silkypix: sharpening, noise reduction, highlight control, etc.

Okay an update.

camera > photoshop cs4
PEF > uncompressed image tiff = 28,7 MB
DNG > uncompressed image tiff = 28.7 MB
so no difference here, can someone explain this?
if you look at the ones with compressed tiff you see an difference but also with computer compressed DNG.

well i zip and rar (best compresion) them for you.
PEF (camera) = 8,15 MB
ZIP = 8,09 MB
RAR = 8,09 MB

DNG (camera) = 16,1 MB
ZIP = 12,2 MB
RAR = 10,1 MB

uncompressed image TIFF (PEF camera) = 28,7 MB
ZIP = 11,9 MB
RAR = 8,86 MB

uncompressed image tiff (DNG camera) = 28,7 MB
ZIP = 12,1 MB
RAR = 8,89 MB

TIFF with zip Image compresion (pef camera) = 8,71 MB
ZIP = 8,70 MB
RAR = 8,71 MB

TIFF with zip Image compresion (DNG camera) = 8,86 MB
ZIP = 8,84 MB
RAR = 8,86 MB

DNG by computer (pef camera) = 6,94 MB
ZIP = 6,75 MB
RAR = 6,72 MB

DNG by computer (DNG camera) = 7,14 MB
ZIP = 6,95 MB
RAR = 6,92 MB

Thanks Stefan, quite a comprehensive test and worth keeping a copy of the results. So I could convert my DNG's from the camera to a smaller DNG on the computer. I wouldn't bother RARing them though the extra compression is only a small gain.

shim

Thanks ttk. I've now has a look at some of the videos and also glanced at the whole 61!! I think they are going to provide plenty of help for me.

Cheers

John