If you've shot digital for any time, you may have dabbled in RAW. You may shoot nothing but RAW, you may even have the tattoo... (no, you can't see mine.) If this is the case, you can't help but be aware that every new digital camera that comes out is very likely to have it's own, special, RAW format. In many cases, if you're one of the ones to run out and buy the hot new sweet thing on the market, you actually have to wait until Adobe releases the next version of Camera RAW to actually process the new RAW files in Photoshop.
This has the potential of a disaster for the photography industry. Imagine, in 10 years time, how many RAW formats will be out there.
Many of the camera manufacturers are trying to address the problem, to a point, by settling on one proprietary format, with very limited actual success. Adobe has, since before 2004, offered it's own initiative: the DNG (Digital Negative) format.
The DNG format was offered as an "open" file format, developed by Adobe and subsequently released to the industry. Addressing the camera's concerns that their files had special data they did not care to make public or allow other programs to use, (the so-called "secret sauce"), Adobe allowed for "maker notes" and other proprietary data.
Some camera manufacturers have seen this as an opportunity to release themselves from software development and concentrate on camera and chip development, notably Leica and Pentax. Others, specifically Nikon and Canon, the major players, stubbornly cling to their file formats, and beyond that, do not even allow DNG to be a shooting option (a very simple firmware update is all it would take, in many cases...).
It's an interesting and volatile issue... as industry standardization always is. For some interesting reading, go to Adobe's DNG site, then visit OpenRAW (a very controversial group...), and if you're ready to support a petition to show the camera companies there's a market for this feature, that's here too.
yeah, yeah, ok. I wrote the petition. Just looking out for you photographers out there!
