Only a few short years ago most photographers had not been persuaded to adopt the Raw file format in any great number and of those who had, it tended to be pulled out just for special occasions. The hefty overheads that came with Raw files, together with the less than ideal post production software of the era, made it a very time consuming proposition. High quality JPGs were so much easier to deal with that they tended to win the argument on most occasions.

In the years since we have acquired much better computers, far cheaper storage media and hugely improved software. Together, all of this has reduced those overheads to the point that working with Raw files has become akin to handling JPGs. Now that they can enjoy all the benefits and few of the constraints, it has come to be that for most of the photographers that I know at least, shooting in Raw is now standard.

But while Raw certainly helps them make better pictures, a seldom realised danger has arisen as an unintended consequence of this mass-migration.

Put simply, have you tried opening a digital image from 1992 lately? It shouldn’t be too much of a bother if that image is in the JPG file format as Adobe Photoshop handles those painlessly of course. How about a Microsoft Word 2.0 document from the same era, though? Worse still, a MacWrite or Nisus Writer document of that vintage? Of course you don’t have those programs anymore, or probably anything sufficiently backwards compatible, either. If push came to shove you’re unlikely to even have a computer that will support the Operating System needed to run them.

With photography the problem is infinitely more pronounced because of the myriad of camera manufacturers, models and resulting formats, and increasing all the time. The end state is finding yourself with a shelf full of old back-up hard drives that you can no longer access.

The danger is standardisation — or the lack thereof. ‘Raw’ itself does not in fact refer to a single standard or even a loose convention. It represents a variety of proprietary file types that differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, even from model to model, all of which need to be interpreted by their own specific software. Wikipedia says there are thirty-seven individual Raw file formats, but I notice their list omits one I recall using ten years ago, so it’s safe to say there are more.

In terms of solutions, Adobe has been the only company so far to offer a meaningful response with its Digital Negative Format (DNG). It’s open-source, licensed to any manufacturer that wants it at no cost, and has so far won favour with the US Library of Congress and is endorsed by the American Society of Media Photographers as a standardisation of the Raw file concept. So far thirty-eight camera models have been equipped with the capacity to shoot in DNG natively, and Raw files from around two-hundred others can be converted with Adobe’s software.

But the OpenRaw working group reports a less than flattering view of DNG. They say it amounts to little more than just another third party file format. It doesn’t transcribe all of the data currently recorded in many Raw files (keeping the full gamut of image data of course being the corner-stone function of Raw in the first place), it is not future proof, and nor is it a truly open-standard are their claims.

I won’t pretend to know enough (or anything in fact) about software and hardware engineering to decide how much of this is true, but what I do know is that I’ve never had a pro-camera with the ability to shoot DNG files natively and I think that’s telling in itself.

If we consider the broad variations in camera sensor hardware across the brands, it’s not necessarily unreasonable to think that creating a universal software format that encompasses them all would involve compromises that result in poorly optimised, one-size-fits-all, bloated files, and that it might not compare all that well to the Raw formats of the present. Because of this, and the fact that none of the hardware majors show any great interest in addressing the problem anyway, I think a less than perfect DNG file will be our best option for a long time to come.

wade@wadelaube.com

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