DNG Experience

[tomczak]

What's the real value of translating native camera RAW files into DNG from a single photographer's perspective (aside from standard arguments of open standard, Lingua franca, and future compatibility - some of it is being said argued for political/commercial reasons). Did anyone used it practically in his/her workflow, and to what effect? Are there translation issues? Is Adobe DNG converter the only way of doing it and why it weigths 35Mb? Cheers.

[Andreas]

I convert my (Pentax) files to DNG when I import them into Adobe Lightroom, mainly because they become much smaller then. My camera can store them directly as DNG's, but then they are not compressed.

I once did compare the resulting TIFF from an image imported as (a) PEF and (b) DNG (all in LR) and they were identical on the byte level, except for an insignificant string of text that I don't remember now.

Another advantage of DNG is that I can use more software with it -software that does not support the native file format of my camera, e.g. because I did not upgrade anymore. (I'm not speaking of PW!)

Andreas.