LOL, the guy with the big white.......lens sure looks like he's pleased with himself

Well, I just went to a seminar at CIPNE (Commercial and Industrial Photographers of New England) and my K10D attracted a lot of attention. The kind of attention that had people saying "Wow, I gota get me one of those!".

With the new lenses coming out (and all us old geezers with M and K lenses laying around) it looks like Pentax might penetrate the professional market after all. Especially after listening to folks gripe about their Canikon gear, and then handling the K10D and saying "you got it for HOW much?!?!?!".

So, snap up those old lenses before they go away. The flood is coming.

That's not the only advantage of ACR4, but the whole idea being developed is that if you can make adjustments in ACR, you store only one file. The renderings are actually a small part of the file in ASCII text that hold the instructions for rendering the file.

The point of DNG (or any RAW format for that matter) is that the original data from the camera is never altered at all, but only an instruction set that is applied to the file. If they can store multiple instruction sets in one file, then you only have to have one file! Not ready for prime time yet, but it is being developed.

Of course, this was a conference of people who could keep only one copy of each file and use something like iView Pro to actually be their database of images. The images themselves are not stored in any particular order, but their locations are carefully listed in the database software.

Just bought it after a conference of commercial photography in Boston. The speaker was using it and the main advantage seems to be ACR4, where you can do many of the adjustments that used to be done in Photoshop BEFORE you commit the RAW file. In fact, in a lot of cases you can archive your changes in DNG format.

Soon to come (second hand via Russel Brown) is the ability to store several renderings at the same time in the same DNG file. So you can have several versions, and only one file stored (the differences are in the instruction set for opening the file).

Dream on! I only wish that they could port Photoshop to Sun Solaris, but a UNIX version is probably not in the cards.

I always just use ACR for dealing with my RAW files.

I have no interest whatsoever in video. But I've used a view camera for specific purposes.

You can even buy a "view camera" type setup that takes a digital back, if yor lenses have a large enough image circle.

There are some things that still photography is needed for, and they'll always be there. Just like painters and illustrators are still working today.

And exactly where do you think the whole HDR concept evolved from?

Each image was only one exposure. I rendered the images in ACR so I could get one interpretation for the shadows and one for the bright sunlight. Then I put one on top of the other and used masking to create the final image.

That's why I said I'm not sure if it counts. HDR supposedly requires a tripod and several exposures. What I used is a single DNG file and basic Photoshop tools.

Excellent image. I don't know if it counts, but I've done similar things by rendering a RAW image for highlights and then for shadows. I combine them into one image.

http://www.gartenphotography.com/images/attractions/Pages/LDG_20070411-113136AA.html

http://www.gartenphotography.com/images/attractions/Pages/LDG_20070411-113140AA.html