soap: Thank you for the info.

This has been an interesting discussion.

But I'm not a pro and don't have anything to add, so I'll just zip it and let the horse rest in peace. :)

Pabnj - as I said I convert with Lightroom while transferring (one of the Library import options).
That said - it should be an identical converter to ADC's, and I ASSume what you are seeing is Adobe not duplicating camera settings upon import, unlike the Nikon products. Adobe has assured everyone nine ways to Friday that the conversion is lossless, and readers of the source have said the same thing. If you are not seeing deep shadow details it is a difference in development settings, not a loss of data.

Soap, you mentioned in a prior post that you convert your NEF files to DNG when you import them from your camera, what do you use to this import/convert. After reading this thread, I tried using the Adobe DNG converter, and noticed a distint loss in deep shadow detail.

I must admit i agree with soap for the most part.
i have been using DNG for quite a while.
I know several very well known photographers who use it aswell.
So, indeed i do think soap has a point - to some extent.
Not that i feel like beating any dead horses, but with my sick mind, taking pictures of one might not be a bad idea, i guess it would leave a certain impact on most people, would you not agree?.

NewFanboy: Lightroom.

soap: What do you use to convert NEF to DNG during tranfer?

Yup, see this is me walking away :^) There I go.....

* With the sound of flies hovering over a nearby dead horse, Niko slowly backs away leaving behind his matchbox of unused rusty DNG files at soap's feet.*

RSS readers make it oh so easy, and if I'm not mistaken you claimed you were "moving on" once before. ;)

You know soap you don't have to monitor this tread from the laundry mat. We can wait for you to get home, but it is a dead horse and I'm moving on

Hardly "owned by Adobe just as NEF is owned by Nikon".
Can you download the NEF spec from Nikon? No. Can you download the DNG spec from Adobe? Yes.
Does NEF contain encrypted data you can only use with Nikon's closed SDK at the whim of Nikon and their license agreement? Yes. Can the same be said about DNG? No, it is completely free to use, modify, and build upon.

As for "but by doing so you are actually loosing some raw data" - that is factually incorrect. That question gets asked thousands of times on Adobe's forums and gets corrected.

I'll happily grant this thread "dead horse" status and agree on "different strokes for different folks" but will reserve the right to correct factual errors.

DNG or NEF are not image formats they are just a format of a file with raw data from an image sensor that software have to convert to an image and then store it in JPEG, TIFF or other image format.
DNG is not a standard, or at least it is no more of a standard then NEF is, it is a format proposed and owned by Adobe, just as NEF is owned by Nikon.
DNG, unlike NEF, is camera independent and when you convert raw data from a sensor to it any program that supports DNG format can process it, on the other hand that also means that conversion routine has to be redeveloped, adjusted and calibrated to a specific sensor characteristics and built in inside the camera and that also uses significant processing power.
It is very easy to convert your raw NEF to DNG files with Adobe DNG Converter directly (even straight from memory card) but by doing so you are actually loosing some raw data and what you get is an interpretation of it.

Deadhorse, moving on

Perfect timing! You caught me at the laundrymat!

IIRC, you have made the DNG to JPEG 2000 comparison in other threads, IIRIC I apologize.

It doesn't need to be on ANY bodies to be an industry standard. Most pro and much amateur software supports it. PERIOD. (see, I can yell too)

What more progress need to be made? The software which matters supports it - camera manufactures supporting it upon capture is just the icing on the cake. With seamless conversion upon transfer it doesn't matter one hoot. There isn't an option by the manufactures with large marketshare because they get to attempt vendor tie-in on their highest profit margin products - their software.

NEF -> DNG isn't compressed TWICE - the inherit data is compressed BETTER, and it surely makes sense even if you don't shoot DNG straight from the camera - even outside tethered shooting I think you will find most pros spend more per year on HDDs than CFs. Your CF cards only get filled up to that point in time you download, your HDDs stay filled forever (knock on wood and backup offsite). Better lossless compression always equals money saved, RAW files are growing in size as fast as storage costs decrease.

The "entire" thing is from your quote "If I handed them an entire DNG Lightroom library..." implying a DNG file is an "entire" library - not a single photo. Something I took as you misunderstanding my comments on your library settings being backed-up into the DNGs, vs XMP sidecar files (which is still an option, not default).

And it is not a dead horse so long as either of us expresses misunderstandings or incorrect conceptions.

So in summary my position:
1 - DNG is smaller than NEF.
2 - DNG can contain development settings inside as opposed to external XML files for NEF.
3 - DNG is an open spec, with no vendor encrypted data, unlike NEF.
4 - More software supports DNG than NEF.*
5 - NEF to DNG can be a seamless conversion upon transfer with no drive overhead and only minimal processor overhead on today's multi-core machines. Processing power has grown at over 20x the rate of interconnect speeds.
6 - Much like the original point of PDF, DNG can insure known rendering on unknown hardware (we still must assume calibration, regardless of format.)
7 - Being an open spec w/o license fees attached or patent encumbrances means in N years from now DNG is more likely to be openable than NEF. NEF's longevity is completely at Nikon's whim. One only needs to look at the torid history of DRM encumbered files (from Divx (NOT DivX) to PlaysForSure to more examples than one can count) to see how even having a large company behind a scheme, with a huge userbase is no promise of longevity.

*Software which "supports" NEF but can't read encrypted WB data doesn't count.

I keep comparing it to JPEG2000?! I only mention it once and that was only to make the analogy that JPEG2000 is a better format than JPEG, so why hasn't it been adopted more? I never compare it directly to DNG so I don't know if your actually reading what I'm saying or if your just skimming and your "quotes" are the only thing your reading. Just because more software recognizes DNG doesn't translate into more people are using it.

Soap if DNG works for you then great! Keep embracing it all you want, but it's NOT an industry standard PERIOD. Until more manufacturers other than Pentax, Casio, Ricoh and now Leica offer it IN ALL OF THERE CAMERAS then it will never make any progress. DNG has been out for FIVE years already. So why isn't there at least, like bmxdad mentions, an option to select DNG aside from JPEG or TIFF in more cameras?

As for the compression, I don't zip a file twice in order to get a smaller file! Why would you expect the same for a photo? NEF to DNG? Your compression arguement only makes sense if you shoot DNG straight from the camera. I have no idea of what you mean when you say, "There is no "entire" anything".

I believe soap and I are officially beating a dead horse now ;^)

NikoDoby - DNG isn't a delivery format unless you're delivering to someone (like a magazine) who will be doing more work on the image. That said - every program you mentioned can open them. Mac OSX and Vista support it at the OS level.

You keep comparing it to JPEG 2000, but that comparison is not apt as 100x more software supports DNG than that. You also keep saying it isn't an industry standard - I don't know who your clients are, but it is more standard than NEF.

You also called it a "entire DNG Lightroom library" - that is also a misunderstanding. They are 1:1 conversions of the individual NEF files. There is no "entire" anything.

As for "compressing them twice" - it is a better LOSSLESS compression scheme - Nikon designed NEF poorly and did not use optimum compression schemes (discussion of design compromises for slow CPU early bodies is valid, but they have changed the compression scheme AT LEAST once, so they could have changed that again), their compression varies from none to poor lossless to "visually lossless" which is code for "lossy". So I don't really understand where you're going with that. You can compress something oo times losslessly without data loss. You wouldn't accuse there of being a problem if I said I unziped a document and then used rar or 7zip to recompress it, would you? Same thing.

What really is missing here is Nikon cameras have a selection of which RAW format we want to shoot in like you can do on Pentax. Why not have a choice to shoot either NEF or DNG

Pete

I of all people would love to embrace DNG, but I don't because it's not an industry standard. It adds an extra step to the puzzle. I use Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, ACDSee, Painter, Macs, PCs etc on a daily basis. The people I hand off to don't care what my workflow is. They just want a file they can open, aka industry standard. If I handed them an entire DNG Lightroom library, they wouldn't have a clue what to do with that.

My workflow is NEF to PSD end of conversion. Yes DNG sounds great on paper, but so does JPEG2000 and when was the last time you handled a photo with that format? DNG does offer smaller files but when your converting from a NEF file to begin with aren't you already compressing the file twice? NEF from the camera and then to a smaller DNG. If you were shooting straight from the camera like with the Pentax K7 then yes its a better format.

Lightroom benefits from DNG in two main ways.
1: is that if you sync your metadata to the DNG files you basically have a portable Library - in that all Library settings are saved inside the files themselves. This allows you to hand off a file to the next person in your chain and all changes you have made are instantly there for them, no complicated (near impossible) syncing of libraries. You can do this with the XMP (XML) sidecar files for .nef / .cr2 / etc files, but this involves sending two files, and you have no assurance that the end user actually sees your file as you intend - you must assume they use the XMP file correctly - which is really point two
2: DNG can ensure fixed rendering. No other raw file gives you the assurance that changes you make at the best time (while the data is still represented as seen on the sensor, not as combined RGB pixels) are rendered properly for the next person.
3: DNG uses better compression than Nikon has added to NEF to date. Smaller lossless files.

As for what software reaps these benefits - I am an Adobe addict on my main Windows machine, and all the current Adobe products see what I have described above and more. My laptop runs Linux and all the tools I use there (dcraw-based tools such as UFRaw and Raw Studio) love DNG and suffer from Nikon's bloody encryption of the whitebalance metadata on current NEF. DNG allows me to take a file I've worked on in Lightroom at home and continue to work on it while on the road with my OSS tools.

Which software benefits from DNG and what advantage does DNG give over NEF aside from future use?

It is another format - but a seamless one - thus the arguments brought up so far against are moot. Seamless in that conversion happens on transfer w/o effort or disk space consumed.
I have too much invested in my photos to leave them in a format which is at the whim of Nikon. If Nikon decides not to support .nef on Windows 10, for example, you're SoL.

And beyond the issue of being at the mercy of Nikon for the viability of my archive, DNG does everything NEF does and more. It is a superset of the NEF format with work flow advantages which I am far from alone in recognizing. I shoot NEF because Nikon forces me to and Nikon makes the bodies I want to use. I convert to DNG because DNG gives me the work flow I need and the insurance I want. No software I use requires me to use DNG, but many benefit from it.

double-post, delete.

soap,how is going from NEF to DNG to PSD versus NEF to PSD "not another format"?! Why shoot NEF if you don't even use it? Just get a camera that shoots DNG like the Pentax K-7. I work with various file formats all day (yes I actually do work and don't just sit on this forum all day) so I'm VERY hesitant to waste time and disk space converting files back and forth.

If I shot with a K-7 why would I want to auto batch convert to NEF in order to use Capture NX, even if the process was seamless? Not sure what software your using that requires you to use DNG, but I have yet to come across an assignment where I'm asked, "Niko can you make sure all the files you give us are in DNG?"

What's so dumb about the proprietary software approach is that the first thing any photographer does is convert it to something usable. I have never, ever, once installed the software that comes with my camera on my computer, and I'm certainly not going to pay for it.

Nikon stands alone as the only company to get the software side right with Capture NX 2, which they had to get NIK to design for them. Even it can be pretty buggy (or so I'm told). I actually had some software from Kodak bring down one of my PC's (it was running windows 98, so its probably only half Kodak's fault) a few years back.

I just don't understand why camera manufacturers think they want to be in the software business. I'll wager that Nikon doesn't make very much off their agreement with NIK.

How is auto batch convert upon transfer an extra step? It is a seamless part of my transfer routine, not "another format" as my PC-side storage system never sees .nef files.

I don't care what camera manufactures support it out of the box. I never mentioned it being standard amongst cameras, only software. They all (camera makers) like their proprietary lock-in raw formats - doesn't mean I have to bend over and take it. It (DNG) has been widely embraced by all segments of the software industry, and that is all I care about.

"Embraced"? soap, DNG has been out for 5 years and it has not still to become the Jpeg of RAW files. It's just a TIFF based file format. If your software understands TIFF then yeah it'll read DNG. The problem is that DNG is still NOT a standard format! Yes you can auto batch convert but again that's an extra step and for someone like me who deals with massive amounts of files that's not a good thing. Why should I add yet another format to my work flow?

I wouldn't call a few cameras (not even all their cameras) from Casio, Sinar, Ricoh, and Samsung as a major embrace. The only success DNG has made is with Leica and Pentax who are just barely "coming around" to the idea, but that has more to do with the fact that they are trying to survive as a manufacturers. When Nikon, Sony, canon, Olympus, and Fuji cameras shoot straight to DNG then you can start tooting the horn. Hell when just one of those big guys starts "supporting" DNG I'll start dancing with you.