Poll: for K7, what raw format should I use? PEF or DNG?


robinhook

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Jun 21, 2005
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I know it might be personal preference as whether to comply with Adobe. But maybe the performance of the two got difference?
So what format do you suggest and why?
 

No much diff in performance. Same information content. Just stick with DNG or jepg also can.
 

99.9% of the time I shoot JPEG.
If RAW, then I shoot using DNG as its easier to find the plugin for the windows explorer to display as thumbnails. Its a more 'generic' format as well, and guards against potential loss of file support.
 

.DNG for me, directly readable on adobe..
 

I am not using a K7 but I use PEF and I always shoot in Raw.

Reason being I am using GIMP with UFRaw and it can read PEF raw files.
I am not sure if PEF can used with Adobe Photoshop. Maybe anyone who knows can advice?
 

Yes, PEF can used with Adobe Photoshop.
 

By default the original camera raw will preserve and give better colours from what I heard but any pro can confirm that?
 

By default the original camera raw will preserve and give better colours from what I heard but any pro can confirm that?

It depends on how you process the RAW file. If you convert the RAW file without doing any processing it will look dull. The in-camera RAW->JPEG conversion usually does some post-processing to improve the image by doing saturation, sharpening, correcting exposure, etc. So when you process the RAW yourself, you will typically add some of these post-processing too, and control how much and how little and what stuff to apply, and if you are experienced you can get the nice colours that you like.

You can still do post-processing with JPEG, but it is definitely not optimal because a lot of data has been lost already in the first conversion to JPEG, that you cannot recover and make use of. So you will end up with more recompression and requantisation noise.
 

It depends on how you process the RAW file. If you convert the RAW file without doing any processing it will look dull. The in-camera RAW->JPEG conversion usually does some post-processing to improve the image by doing saturation, sharpening, correcting exposure, etc. So when you process the RAW yourself, you will typically add some of these post-processing too, and control how much and how little and what stuff to apply, and if you are experienced you can get the nice colours that you like.

You can still do post-processing with JPEG, but it is definitely not optimal because a lot of data has been lost already in the first conversion to JPEG, that you cannot recover and make use of. So you will end up with more recompression and requantisation noise.

This is why I always shoot in raw. I want total control on how my pictures will look like. I adjust white balance, exposure, highlight clipping, shadows, saturation and contrast for selected photos. But I am colour blind so sometimes the colours will look slightly off for non colour blind people. :(

So back to topic, can anyone explain the difference between PEF and DNG?
 


now seems to me that PEF is slightly smaller and records more pentax's own vendor info. But DNG is likely to be supported by more software/versions because it's kind of quasi-open spec/format
 

99.9% of the time I shoot JPEG.
If RAW, then I shoot using DNG as its easier to find the plugin for the windows explorer to display as thumbnails. Its a more 'generic' format as well, and guards against potential loss of file support.

;)I shot almost 100% when using istD, since it was damn slow storing big raw file...but now the big-fast storage era has come along with my new K7, so I guess i won't hurt to learn RAW and develop a bit of digital negative workflow,so... totally agree with you, DNG seems to be more generic, esp if one day I have to abandon PSCS2/3/4 cause they original license are quite expensive even for pro, and OEM license is kinda illegal...
 

I use PEF simply for the smaller filesize. Most RAW programs can handle PEFs natively anyway, including the one I've paid for (Bibble 5 Pro), and if in future PEF support disappears in favour of DNG, I can still get them converted to DNG and set my camera to use DNG. But for now, I use PEF.
 

My pref.

Pentax Software = PEF
Adobe Software = DNG