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We asked camera companies why their RAW formats are all different and confusing

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361 points Tomte | 8 comments | 04 Apr 25 11:41 UTC | HN request time: 1.05s | source | bottom
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yjftsjthsd-h ◴[07 Apr 25 04:20 UTC] No.43607646[source]▶
This isn't really my area, so I'm probably wrong... I'd always assumed that RAW files were, well, raw data straight off the sensor (or as close as possible)? In which case, you could standardize the container format, but I wouldn't think it was possible to have a standard format for the actual image data. Would appreciate if anyone could correct me (a quick skim of wikipedia didn't clear it up)
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1. buildbot ◴[07 Apr 25 04:29 UTC] No.43607699[source]▶
Typically they are not to my knowledge! Though I am also not an expert. Most camera makers apply a fixed sensor profile, and possibly a dark frame to remove noise before writing out the values to whatever file. Some of them may apply lens optimizations to correct distortion or vignetting as well.
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2. mubou ◴[07 Apr 25 04:47 UTC] No.43607801[source]▶
On top of that, I hear the RAW format on some smartphones is saved after the phone does its fake-HDR and computational photography bullshit, so it's even further from "raw" with those cameras.
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3. tobyhinloopen ◴[07 Apr 25 05:55 UTC] No.43608231[source]▶
The corrections are just metadata, the RAW data is still there. This is true for both DNG and ARW (Sony). Dont know the other brands. The corrections can even look different based on what program you use to interpret them.
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4. buildbot ◴[07 Apr 25 06:00 UTC] No.43608269[source]▶
I don’t think that’s true in general. As a sibling comments points out, this is not true for some DNGs - for example, the output of an iPhone is in DNG, but with many, many transforms already baked in. A DNG might even be debayered already.

GFX 100s II’s apply a transform to RAW data at iso 80, see: https://blog.kasson.com/gfx-100-ii/the-reason-for-the-gfz-10...

I don’t know much about ARW, but I do know that they offer a lossy compressed format - so it’s not just straight off the sensor integer values in that case either.

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5. tobyhinloopen ◴[07 Apr 25 06:29 UTC] No.43608437{3}[source]▶
Okay true, but that's not the format's fault (:

The GFX 100s II thing is very interesting. Totally not what I would expect from such a "high end" camera.

6. spookie ◴[07 Apr 25 06:40 UTC] No.43608497{3}[source]▶
damn, that is a quirk that would've led me pulling my hair out if I worked with those.
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7. tobyhinloopen ◴[07 Apr 25 13:43 UTC] No.43611364{4}[source]▶
At least it's only at ISO 80, where noise would be minimal anyway (: I rarely use noise reduction because I don't like the artificial cleanliness of the result.
8. kalleboo ◴[08 Apr 25 04:29 UTC] No.43618360[source]▶
This is true for Apple's "ProRAW" that you get if you choose RAW in the iOS camera app. Third party camera apps like Photon can shoot actual RAW raw though, the hardware and OS APIs do support it.