Thanks for the thoughtful and great comment. I’ll let Rick speak for himself, but I personally COULD NOT bring myself to deleting the original RAW files as they come out of the camera, so if I converted to DNG, that would be an additional file and hence the comment about using so much space.

I suspect that this is also Ricks thinking…

-J

To be fair, if you embed the original RAW inside the DNG (which can be done), then yes, you’d get half again to 2/3 more space used. But just the DNG alone is 1/2 to 2/3 the size of the original RAW–mine are typically 11 to 12MB, vs 18 to 21MB for the CR2 files out of the 50D. You do lose the Dust Delete and Focus Point data, if you actually use those. I don’t…

Now, if you’re doing forensic or legal photography, where the integrity of the original must be scientifically provable, I’m not sure how DNG holds up there–because the XMP data is actually written into the file itself (another HUGE HUGE benefit, in my opinion! but I don’t know how that affects the legal integrity of the file. But I don’t do legal photography, so don’t care).

Personally, I convert everything to DNG on import. Get home, pop the card in, start the import, and go unload. Sure, it takes a little longer, but it’ll save my some $$ on disk space! And if you dump to a hard drive in the field, and then import & convert when you get back home or to the hotel, then convert is that much quicker, as you’re not bringing the data over the slow USB interface.

Anyhow, whatever works for a person is what that person should do. However, last I heard, Scott Bourne does DNG (or probably, his assistant!!) :)

It was a good podcast. I keep meaning to send in some questions that have been bugging me (and aren’t answered on Google…).

Thanks!
Matt

Rosh

Choose your audience and make sure that you’re writing for that audience.