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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Thanks Leica for DNG: Request for 16 BIT files now.

Fabio Riccardi

New member
Fabio, is surely among the industry's leading thinkers and software originators producing innovative tools we need and value. His work, Lightzone, the product of personal efforts works and works well.

His innovations are original based on a paradign that guided distinguised photographers of the last century. Like Bibble, Raw Shooter, DXO and RAW Shooter, his software resulted from visions of imaginators with little funds but dreams and their own brains.

Now Lightzone competes and stands proudly, side by side, with the brilliant work of Aperture, Bibble, C1, DXO, Lightroom, Raw Developer, Raw Shooter, SilkyPix and more. His words fed by experience, skill and knowledge, should give pause to detractors and instruction to Leica and all the other companies.



Hi Asher,

the M8 is a fantastic camera, I didn't mean to diminish it in any way, and most of the times it can produce just superb images. Fortunately aside from some black syntetic matherials, there are very few objects in nature that have a high reflectivity in the IR spectrum, so the concerns are pretty minimal, unless you're really in goth fashion photography...

I actually totally understand the concerns of Leica engineers and where their "problem" comes from.

With very sharp lenses as the Leicas the interface with the sensor is critical, if you have ever studied in detail images from the older Canon 1Ds (I have looked very closely to lots of pixels while developing my own RAW converter) you will notice lots of chromatic aberration with wide angle lenses, the sharper the lens the higher the CA. These aberrations totally disappeared on the later Canon cameras (1Ds mkII, 5D).

IMHO this is due to a too thick IR filter on the older sensors, which would diffract light at various angles depending on the wavelenght, especially for wide angle lenses.

Engineering is the art of compromise, you want to use sharp lenses on digital cameras that were not designed for the purpose? Well, they have to come with something that works, at least most of the time. If I would have worked in the Leica engineering department I would probably have made the same choice.

I think that the real "problem" with the M8 is people expect a lot from it and they're looking way too close to its (very sharp) pixels. Maybe no other cameras has been scrutinized so closely before. If you look at the weird stuff that the Canon Or Nikon (or everybody else's) engineering departments have produced in the last few years, you'd be surprised that it works at all. Still people take lots of great pictures using that stuff.

It is a new product (just like LightZone :) but it is really promising. The M8 is a camera that you can "feel" in your hands, where the attention doesn't go to the bleep of the autofocus but instead your eyes have to *see* what you're doing. Many photographers underestimate the power of their eyes and get trapped in a maze of meaningless technical information, histograms and what not.

The Leica M8 can help photographers to reestablish confidence in their own eyes and start taking pictures again.

Now please, if they could produce a full 16 bits DNG file instead of a silly 8 bits gamma encoded one. ;)

Cheers,

- Fabio
 
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Dawnne Gee

New member
Fabio Riccardi said:
Now please, if they could produce a full 16 bits DNG file instead of a silly 8 bits gamma encoded one. ;)

OMG.....Thank you so much for saying that out loud, and I sincerely hope someone who works for (pick virtually any DSLR manufacturer) heard that, too! ;-)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Dawnne Gee said:
OMG.....Thank you so much for saying that out loud, and I sincerely hope someone who works for (pick virtually any DSLR manufacturer) heard that, too! ;-)

Leica starts out with DNG files but 8 BIT. Canon cripples the G7 with only jpg while so many manufactorers cling to their private RAW formats, each with secret access to camera and lens descriptors.

Its time to follow a new path. All companies should now commit to 16 BIT DNG and open access to firmware so that the Digital camera can enter a more brilliant age.

Read the work of the. OpenRAW team


"In June 2006, the OpenRAW team sent out printed hardcopies of the 2006 RAW Survey report to the top management of Canon, Nikon and Sony in Japan and a few days ago we received a "thank you" letter from Sony."

Response by Yasuo Takagi of Sony said:
........We admire your effort to gather so much valuable
information and for making it available on the World Wide Web.

Some of the information is useful for planning and designing new products.
We believe using this information will enable us to create products that
will meet our customers' desires. We have already instructed our production
section to refer to these data. We will make every effort to meet customers'
desires to become their preferred company. We are grateful to you for
sending us such valuable information.

Thank you very much. Please pardon the delay in writing to you.

Thank you for favoring us, and we wish business success and good health for
Mr. Juergen Specht and Mr. Calvin Jones.

Yasuo Takagi

Please add your support here and in the Open RAW website.

To facilitate more creative software so as to develop images that allow us realize out creative intents now and in the future we need a new attitude. Here's the deal, we buy your cameras, you allow us to make images from our files and implement our vision. We therefore request and demand the following three standards

1. Open access to our own data with DNG or a new robust standard

2. Open access to including hidden lens data to optimize our images.

3. Open access to software companies to develop innovative firmware we can choose to load into our cameras.
.

Asher
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
The "Open RAW" site has been collecting names for a very long time. I'm sorry to sound cynical, but it's utterly and absolutely meaningless and toothless.

If you want to cast votes that count, cast them with your wallet. Don't buy cameras that don't feature intrinsic support for DNG. It's that simple. Whining and list-making on Internet sites are wastes of time.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
This thread is for everyone but especially for the other designers who can contribute to software development for firmware options and better RAW processing.

We have here many of the software designers for RAW processing. Their support is my principal aim. Otherwise, software develpment is limited. There is utterly no reasonable excuse for not allowing firmware to be provided by 3rd parties, for example. We are simply underusing the potential of our cameras and our precious files.

Asher
 

Dave New

Member
Canon can start by simply restoring the focus distance information to the EXIF information in their more recent bodies.

Little did I know, that by trading up from my firmware-crippled 300D (Digital Rebel) to the 20D, that I would gain functionality in the camera body that could have/should have been supplied in the 300D (mirror lockup, FEC, 2nd curtain sync, etc), but that my DxO Optics Pro program would be CRIPPLED, due to Canon's disregard for 3rd party participation in "their" marketplace.

PLEASE Canon, listen to your users, and stop dropping features simply because "your software doesn't use it".

Thanks.
 

Fabio Riccardi

New member
Oh, I didn't mean to be enrolled in the Open RAW thing, DNG is open enough for me and you can produce DNG files that cointain a RAW raster pretty easily.

My gripe is that Leica is being cheap and is "compressing" raw data to 8bit gamma encoded, which I don't think is a very smart choice...

Cheers,

- Fabio
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Fabio,

You are correct, of course. Leica has done the right thing in going to DNG. That is exemplary. We are so happy in that it also makes it many steps easier for software designers to give their energies to features, as opposed to digging for data. Thet just need to go the extra step. That should be a straightforward firmware option.

Still, DNG and giving all the data, is not yet standard in the industry.

Hopefully, Sony will follow suit in offering DNG as opposed to their RAW format. At least the response of Sony appears to say they are listening to the OpenRAW feedback and pressure.

So I believe we can help.

I resent having to give up a G7 because it doesn't have RAW. I'd like to program my DSLR's as I wish. We have open access to our Mac's and PC's why not our cameras?

Asher
 

Jack Joseph Jr

New member
Sorry to be a spoil-sport but DNG doesn't interest me at all. I don't want any standard to get in the way of camera engineers developing better RAW formats. The least of what I want is for the maker of a $600.00 software application (Adobe) to be telling the engineers of a $4000.00 camera what software to use. That's just a$$backwards.

That said I think that Canon has an obligation to its customer base to release details of its RAW formats to image processing application writers. That the world's leading image processing application cannot correctly decode WB from the world's leading SLR maker is not only stupid, it's an affront to the users who are the only reason that both companies are successful.

But DNG? Forget it. I'll take CR3, CR4 or whatever Canon comes up with for their future products. Let's let the dog wag the tail.
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Asher,

It's early days yet wrt programming your dslr. Also, you do not program your pc. I do not think you are encouraged to mess with the bios.

It really needs a good sort out, as I've mentioned before, a class action may do the trick? (not that I know what that is about, but the manufacturers are unlikely to 'give away' what they think is theirs, so they will probably have to be taught the error of their ways.)

When you buy the camera, what are you buying? Why should canon collect information about you, within your camera that you have bought? When you buy your bmw, why should bmw collect information about you, within their ecu? Its not just cameras, it's the whole area of sneaky collection of information that these companies undertake. They collect it, without your approval, and use it against you, when it suits them. Raw file information content, is just a small part of the discussion, imho.

but wrt focal length, if that is the same as Dave mentioned as focus distance, then for the 20d, it is available - Irfan view displays it quite clearly and correctly, for example. If dpp uses it, then it must be in the raw file, so it then only needs dxo, or whoever, to do a bit of reverse engineering to extract it for themselves.

The camera makers are really incredibly stupid. If folk want to find the information, they will just spend the time and effort, and work it out for themselves. Instead of wasting their effort on protecting their secret file formats, and changing battery profiles and connectors, they should concentrate on designing decent lenses and imaging systems. It's just a camera, nothing important.;-)

Not that I think that Sony is any better than the others, but they are pretty small fry in the still imaging side of things, but a major player in the video side. If they had enough balls, they may, for a change, decide to be completely open with their still camera designs, make a range of bodies to take canon/nikon/leica lenses, and so on. They could afford to really stir things up, just for the sake of it, and they could well come out on top. Of course, that may not be the ideal thing for Japan Ltd, so we may have to wait a while longer.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Jack,

I'm glad you are here. That in itself makes be feel good!

The point you make that camera companies might devise more powerful RAW formats is valid. That doesn't take away need for a robust, capacious standard file too.

You are quite right in that "Who declared DNG king?, Where did this standard come from, Where will it go?" However, in principal, a standard that is open and can be relied on to be available in the future is needed. For now, what is it about DNG that is a problem technically? .

It's not just a matter of translating the data. Its also a matter of having access to lookup tables on different lenses for example.

I'm not selling DNG. What I do support, as you do is open access for developers, including look up tables and everything measured and firmware keys.

Asher
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Jack,

Thanks for the post. I had a look some time back at the dng spec, thought it was too complicated, but there was some other sort of 'gut feeling' I had about it. You've just nailed it. It's Adobe.

If the half dozen camera makers got together - that's impossible, but if they could - then it wouldn't take much to agree on say a 16 bit tif file, with either a linked file or included ascii or even xml info to cover all the stuff that could be useful in any future manipulation. They could keep the proprietory raw info in camera, but it's downloaded and immediately converted and stored in the fitall format on the pc.

Get the right people together, it could be sorted in a couple of days. If we allowed a week, they could have a bit of a party in the last few days.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Fabio Riccardi

New member
Dear All,

Maybe I'm missing the point, but once again I'd lik eto contribute 2c of my own perspective: DNG is just a variant of regular TIFF files, there is absolutely nothing profound or special with them. It is easier to deal with metadata in DNG files because it can be encapsulated and it has less restrictions than what TIFF use to do. Also it is designed for photography and it is flexible, this would ensure against manufacturers feeling the urge to change things just because they have some extra special need.

All other camera manufacturers just use TIFF variants, again absolutely nothing special.

BTW: did you know that Adobe "maintains" the current TIFF standard?

http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/tiff/index.html

Canon used a somewhat different file format in the past (CRW) for which a full spec is available on the net. The new CR2 format is just a TIFF.

All the TIFF RAW variants existing out there exists only because TIFF is old and inflexible, not because manufacturers have to invent something for the sake of it.

LightZone presents you with all the metadata information contained in the file (probably too much) for instance DNG files from Leica give you the lens used for the shot, including its 35mm equivalent lenght. This worked right out of the box, we didn't have to do anything special for it.

Now, the complicated bit is not in the file format, which has we have seen is pretty trivial, rather it is in the demosaicing of the image, the choice of the primaries, and the handling of diversity. Every camera manufacturer has a different "special" thing in their camera that we have to handle in some ad hoc way.

Did you know that Olympus cameras use four colors and non three for the RGB filter? For that I had to develop a special agorithm different from the standard I have...

Fujii cameras have double pixels and the image is rotated by 45 degrees...

The Nikon D1X has a stretched sensor that requires ad hoc interpolation...

The list could be longer, and yes there are annoyances like Nikon encrypting their white balance, that is silly.

But come on, the file format is nothing with respect to all the other details you have to figure out in supporting a camera...

Sure a standardized file format would help, less work to do for us, DNG is just as good as anything else. I'm sure that Leica engineers were pretty happy not having to reinvent the wheel and could just use something out of the shelf, that must have saved them quite a bit of time.

- Fabio
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Thank you for your remarks, Fabio. Very informative coming from someone who has had to really dig deeply into the subtleties, intricacies and similarities of these various image file formats. (Why in the world does Fuji rotate the image 45 degrees?!)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Thanks so much again Fabio!

Now perhaps something a little more difficult. Recently a card was corrupted and the Canon RAW files wont open in Adobe software or in iphoto. They can be taken in by iview but there's little control over the files but some of them can be exported as tiffs and this recovered if the color space is Lab and then CS2 can use the file, otherwise not! So it appears that the Canon RAW files have lost their Prophoto RGB profile. however, it's really beyond me!

Are there repair utilities for RAW pictures.

Asher
 
Ken Tanaka said:
(Why in the world does Fuji rotate the image 45 degrees?!)

That's a cute one. When the pixels are lined up along x and y, you get resolution of 1 unit along x and y and 1/1.4 units along the xy diagonals, where both dimensions contribute to resolution. Since the world has more horizontals and verticals than diagonals, Fuji rotates things and gets more resolution along the x and y directions. Or so they claim.

scott
 
"8 bits" only for the final result

One thing that keeps getting lost in the fulminations over 8-bit DNG files is that all the tricky stuff is done in 16 bit precision before finally taking a square root and stuffing the result into the DNG raw file. That means that the radial corrections for wide angle lens vignetting, and the color correction for the extra photometric filtering in the cover glass (and in the next firmware, the additional, optional correction for an IR-cut filter out front) are done first in 16 bit, and of course dark frame subtraction and basic color corrections as well. Just not de-Bayer interpolation. It appears that this allows unusually fast display of the image that you just took on the LCD, while the jpeg is still being compressed.

Incidentally, early test models of the M8 still had 16 bit DNG files, exactly like the DMR. So it is not out of the question that they could come back at least as an option. LFI mentions this in an article on the engineering tradeoffs and problems (which I haven't seen yet -- it is only available on paper).

scott
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I'd like any of these early 16 BIT files especially if they show Moire as I have an imaging engineer who wants to play with them!

Asher
 

John Sheehy

New member
Asher Kelman said:
I'd like any of these early 16 BIT files especially if they show Moire as I have an imaging engineer who wants to play with them!

Moire isn't related to bit-depth or gamma. It's an optical reality of capture.
 

John Sheehy

New member
scott kirkpatrick said:
and of course dark frame subtraction and basic color corrections as well.

Dark frame subtraction before writing RAW files is problematic if you really want to dig deep into the shadows. Obviously, it must be done in gamma-adjusted data, but if you stack, bin, or downsample the RAW data, you will never have true blacks. You must have the linear data with the blackpoint bias still in the data. That's one reason Canon DSLRs are popular for astrophotography; Canon leaves the bias there, and I certainly hope they always will.
 

Michael Tapes

OPF Administrator/Moderator
Interesting discussion. My 2 cents on it all....

--I agree with Fabio that DNG is as good a choice as anything else. I think that Thomas Knoll is open to make into whatever the industry NEEDS to make it work. It is an evolving standard.

--The RAW data that is stored inside the DNG is EXACTLY the same as in a .CR2 for example. The DNG is just a container. It does not define any quality or RAW limitations.

--As to Asher's discussion of open camera firmware support. Sorry to disagree but this would be the last thing that anyone would want. Like the analogy with messing with the PC or Mac bios. That is up to the manufacturer, just as their choice of buttons on the camera. If you do not like the way the camera works, do not buy it.

JMHO YMMV :>)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Michael!

Good to have your comment!

My reasoning is straightforward. We don't want to alter the bios but, like a Mac or Pc we should be able to reassign functions to different buttons at will.

Software designers even working alone have produced all sort of great advances that neither Apple nor Microsoft imagined! Opening up the capability to add a layer for new functions/combinations would be a great advance. I m sure a new cottage industry would develop!

Asher
 
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