Comments (1)

By dlscape, May 19, 2010 18:46

So many people are banging on about the wonderful benefits of DNG that I had to say something.

I used to be an avid LR user. I loved the way it did almost everything from camera download to final print via a web gallery for good measure.

Then I bought a D700 and installed the trial version of Capture NX2. What a double edged sword that turned out to be. CNX2 is pretty clunky, hangs at least once a day and has no real DAM options. However, it does know how to talk to my NEF files properly. So it auto fixes any CA errors, high order lens distortion (not just pin cushion), does a better job of noise reduction and supports Active D-Lighting (what a life saver this is if you know how to use it!)

Talk about giving with one hand and taking away with the other!

Adobe have had to go with the one engine (ACR) so that Lightroom can handle many different RAW formats while maintaining editing options. However, by doing this they have made the choice to only ever give a pretty close, reverse engineered version of what the file actually looks like. I’ve done LOTS of testing to see if I could stomach going back to ACR conversion of my files but now I’ve made the jump to CNX2 I’m stuck there. If anyone tells you there is no difference in quality, they are either telling you a whopper or they haven’t really done a comparison.

So to get to the point of this post; Converting to DNG means you are using the current best guess of what a NEF file should look like according to Adobe. Once you have converted the file you will never be able to go back to the original (assuming you dumped it like so many of you say you do) and run it through an updated converter some time down the line to get a better result. You’ll be stuck with how the file looked using today’s technology.

An example of what I’m trying to say; Back when I had my D70 about five years ago, I tried the trial copy of Capture NX to convert some files. I’ve been able to go back to those files using the latest Capture NX 2 (v 2.2.4) and rework them so they look noticeably better than before. If I’d converted them to DNG back when I took them (using the version of ACR that was around back then) they would still look pretty much the same today. The issue of xmp side car files evaporated when I went over to CNX2 also, as it writes all changes back into the NEF file, even multiple versions should you want to try different development tweaks. And at any point you can revert an edited file straight back to the original, un tweaked version at the click of a button.

So to summarise – if you feel that Adobe’s rendering of your NEF’s is good enough for you, then carry on using it. When they day comes that Nikon finally stops supporting your version of NEF (if it ever happens) then you can always convert them over to DNG at that point.

But, if you ARE going to go down the DNG route, I strongly suggest you keep your original NEF’s because once they are gone you can never get them back. And lets face it, a few DVD’s to back up your originals isn’t going to break the bank.

You’ll thank me for it one day…