Beside the file size saving advantage, are there other reasons to convert RAW into DNG when importing files into Lightroom. Any disadvantages of doing it?
I started converting all of my RAWs to DNGs. No real immediate advantage to it. Just a hunch. DNG (being open source) will probably have longer legs than a proprietary RAW file from manufacturers. What's the incentive of third party (i.e. Adobe) to continue to incorporate all the various RAW algorithms from the hundreds (eventually to be thousands?) of past cameras with future products. What's going to happen in 5, 10, 20 years? What if a new company creates a great piece of software in the future that I want to use on old files. Will it read RAW from my 20D or 5D? Of course there is no guarantee that it will read DNG either so its a bit of a gamble either way. However, I just feel safer with DNGs. Just an opinion though. I have no hard evidence to suggest that one is definitely better than the other.
D pretty much said it. To sum up dng. main points are:
- smaller file size
- no xmp sidecar file.
- likelihood of support for file type far into the future.
DNG may work for Canon but in my view is still completely unusable for Nikon. I would never use a RAW format that is not native to the camera unless I was certain there was no loss of information. I do wish the native files would allow the elimination of sidecar files.
In the case of Nikon, the Nikon software does a better job of color rendition in some cases. The Nikon also software cannot read DNG. Although I use Lightroom for the vast majority of my processing, I still need to go to the Nikon software for some images. Converting to RAW and incorporating the native file seems pointless. I am willing to listen to counter arguments on the last point.
