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

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361 points Tomte | 7 comments | 04 Apr 25 11:41 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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Scaevolus ◴[04 Apr 25 15:57 UTC] No.43584261[source]▶
Ultimately, RAW formats aren't that complex, and camera firmware is mostly developed in countries that don't have strong open source software traditions.

Look at the decoders for each format that darktable supports here: https://github.com/darktable-org/rawspeed/tree/develop/src/l...

It's some binary parsing, reading metadata, maybe doing some decompression-- a thousand lines of C++ on average for each format. These aren't complex codecs like HEVC and only reach JPEG complexity by embedding them as thumbnails!

Cameras absolutely could emit DNG instead, but that would require more development friction: coordination (with Adobe), potentially a language barrier, and potentially making it harder to do experimental features.

Photographers rarely care, so it doesn't appreciably impact sales. Raw processing software packages have generally good support available soon after new cameras are released.

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1. dllu ◴[07 Apr 25 19:56 UTC] No.43615274[source]▶
Fujifilm lossy compressed raw still isn't supported after many years [1].

[1] https://github.com/darktable-org/rawspeed/issues/366

And in my experience there has been lots of bugs with Fujifilm raws in darktable:

[2] https://github.com/darktable-org/rawspeed/issues/354

[3] https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/issues/18073

However, Fujifilm lossless compressed raw actually does a decent job keeping the file sizes down (about 50% to 60% the file size of uncompressed) while maintaining decent write speed during burst shooting.

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2. zahlman ◴[07 Apr 25 23:24 UTC] No.43616954[source]▶
It's really strange to me that a lossy compressed format could be called "raw". Does that just mean that it hasn't been e.g. gamma-corrected before the compression was applied? (Is it even a good idea to do lossy compression before such correction?)
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3. 4ad ◴[07 Apr 25 23:36 UTC] No.43617023[source]▶
All raw means is scene-referred data. The idea that somehow raw means "raw" data from the sensor is an often repeated idea, but unfortunately is completely nonsense. Modern sensors do on-chip noise reduction, they can be programmed to give data in all kind of formats and with different processing done to it. The same sensor used in different cameras can have different ISO. The same sensor used in different cameras can produce different RAW files even at the same ISO. Not just in the sense of a different file format, in the sense of different data in the file, from the exact same sensor, but programmed differently.
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4. jiggunjer ◴[08 Apr 25 00:12 UTC] No.43617192{3}[source]▶
Source? There are lossless and lossy transformations. In many scientific contexts raw implies no lossy transformations in terms of information.
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5. danudey ◴[08 Apr 25 18:22 UTC] No.43624896{4}[source]▶
This isn't a scientific context, it's a marketing one.
6. zahlman ◴[08 Apr 25 18:34 UTC] No.43625058{3}[source]▶
"scene-referred data", as opposed to... something consciously edited?
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7. 4ad ◴[08 Apr 25 18:54 UTC] No.43625295{4}[source]▶
No, scene-referred vs. display-referred. These are standard terms.

https://www.color.org/scene-referred.xalter

https://ninedegreesbelow.com/photography/display-referred-sc...

https://ansel.photos/en/workflows/scene-referred/