Digital Negative Format - anyone??

[DWJ]

There has been discussion regarding the long term storage/retrieval of digital pictures. Adobe has addressed this with the “Digital Negative Format” which would someday become the standard format for storing raw images. ( I believe a couple of camera manufactures have adopted it as well.)

Has anyone incorporated this conversion into their workflow yet and do you think that this format will be adopted by others to truly make it a standard or am I just going to waste my time doing these conversions.

Dave

 

[Scubatooth]

DWJ

personally i do not use adobes DNG format because the format itself isnt adapted to all raw formats so its not truely a universal raw format (wont work on fuji s2 raw files)

personally for me i keep all versions of the software i own and have used from the current to going back a couple of versions.

Personally my workflow is realitively straight forward in layout and design. my workflow is mainly with a combonation of 3 programs , Photoshop CS 2, Adobe Bridge, and extensis portfolio (just got it so im working through it), but its looking like adobes light room may be added to this list depending on how the beta testing goes. The raw files come in and i do the basic adjustments in ACR from bridge (exposure,tint, white balance, curves, contrast, and capture sharpening) and then as needed i bring them into PS to do the finishing touches on them before outputing them in various ways(print, web, etc). the raw files are kept in one folder and then any editted images are put in another folder so that i dont confuse my self when looking at them (this is way i like extensis portfolio in that i can view all versions of a file if i wish) in folder view. When im saving my files i always save them as TIFF or PSD files as those formats do no comperssion on the files and keep the images the way i editted them no matter how many times is save them.

Then my workflow is completely different when it comes to working with film images as they require a different approach to get scans that are amazing.

As for DNG format being used by manufacutres, the only ones that do it are very high end digital backs for medium format cameras (hasselblad H2D)and hasnt reached mainstream because of some compadibility issues

FWIW

Tooth

 

[DWJ]

Thanks for the input your comment on the FUJI S2 is exactly my concern.
I work in the healthcare industry and am required to keep all documentation for 7 years. Most of what we do is digitized and backed up on tape or CDR and stored. I'll tell you right now that stuff that was backed up 5 years ago I couldn't get to without a herculean effort. The tape dives have changed and old the hardware is no longer compatable with current technology and the formating of the documents have also changed so even if I could get to the stuff, I couldn't read it. So here at work we have started to keep paper Backups to backup the digital backups. Real Efficent.

I shoot with a couple of different camera. Nikon D70s, Sony D-717, OLY 5050z and a couple of Nikon film cameras As with most shooters, Be it hobbiest or pro, I have a large library of images from each of those cameras. If I'm working on a project, I'll go back and pull an image that I may have taken years ago and modify it for the project I'm working on. In other words my inventory of images has financial value. It is not really a reach to think that technological changes could render portions of that inventory worthless if I don't consistantly keep my digital photos in a current usable format. I guess that's why I'm hoping to find a "standard" that protects this investment for the long term with minimal maintance.

Dave

 

[PapaBob]

Hi Dave:

Here is a link to a recent post on your question CLICK HERE. If Adobe says they will support DNG then that is the format I will work in. CS2 came with a DNG converter or you can download it from the Adobe website. I shoot Canon and my 300D uses CRW raw files while my 20D uses CR2. I would like to see a uniform standard and converting to DNG is about as close as you get right now. Let me know if you have any questions.

---Bob

 

[Scubatooth]

DWJ

i feel your pain on having to keep back ups as there isnt much that i throw away in the way of pictures. my current set up to most would seem over kill for back up but when you have a extensive library of images, you have to protect them. I do agree with you a good collection is valuable as i regularly pull images from the past when working on my projects or when doing composite images, this is why i like bridge and extensis so much in that it makes looking at the images so much easier, especially with raw files.

my archieve is a such. no images are saved on my computer but on a machine that is a dedicated file server. each drive except for the system drive is run on raid 1 (mirroring) in realtime then i have a caged drive that is in the machine that at midnight each night does a backup of files on to the caged drive. these caged drives are kept in the computer for 1 week at a time. on monday mornings i pull out the caged drive and take it to the bank where i have a safe deposit box(es, yes multiple ) where i pull out the secondary set of caged drives and deposit the first set, then i go home and put those caged drives in the server. so for each 250 GBs of data there are 4 copies of it that arent more then 24hours to 7 days old. which is long enough for me to recover if i have a issue. Its getting to the point that i have so many pictures and scans stored that im even thinking about a offsite back up server in the event that the bank and my house are affected i would have a fail safe. that may seem over kill to some but for me its almost getting to a need in that im using 3-10 GBs a week in storage because of raw files and scans(from 50mb-1.5+ GB) from my archives

current storage ~900 GB over 5 seperate drives that i maintain onsite (20 drives being maintained currently and wll probably need another set of 250gb drives by the end of the summer)

as for the drives they are replaced on 2.5 year cycles to maintain reliability and data intergrity. i do burn the occasional cd or DVD but due that the discs tend not to last very long i would rather stay with HDD storage until the archival properties have been proven.


as for a file type that is going to be around for a while and isnt going to disappear i would reccomend tiff files from the raw files, and also keeping a copy or two of image software that can convert your current raw files.

if you would like to talk about dedicated back up plans feel free to send me a message and would glad to help you out..

Tooth