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

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.

I always thought camera RAW formats were optimize continuous shooting rates. About being able to linearly write an image as fast as possible.

I don't know the details of DNG but even the slightest complication could be a no-go for some manufacturers.

The bottleneck is usually in SD card write speeds, however. Sport photographers often skip raw and only use JPG because the files are smaller and as a result, one can take more photos in one burst.

Canon’s “sport professional” camera has lower resolution than the “second tier” cameras. It has a higher frame rate and CFExpress and SDXC2 so bandwidth isn’t an issue. Last I checked you could burst 40 or 50 frames (at 20ish fps) before filling the internal buffer.

You can definitely do more than that these days. My Nikon Z8 can do 30fps with 1xCFExpress, and the flagship Z9 can do 120fps because it has 2xCFExpress and alternates writes. On the Sony side they have a closer differentiation to what you describe, the flagship (A1 II) does only 30fps compared to the next-best (A9 III) which does 120fps, while the prosumer (A7 RV) only does 10fps.

I don't know Canon well, but 120fps w/ dual CFExpress + 800-1200 frames buffer is fairly standard on top-end professional sports/wildlife mirrorless cameras these days.

Z8 and Z9 can do the same, Z9 can do 120fps in jpeg mode 11MP, similar to your Z8. Z8/Z9 will do 30fps in jpeg fullresolution, 20fps in RAW. how long it can do it without slowing down depends on your card, and whether you use uncompressed raw, lossless raw, lossy raw etc

Yes, you are correct. The spec sheet isn't particularly clear on this so I got it wrong taking it at face value, but on the Rolling Shutter Project it shows the sensor readout speed is the limit, which both use the same sensor. For the higher speed continuous (which is only on the Z9 AFAIK, 30fps is the max I see for CH on my Z8) it uses the video pipeline rather than the standard photo pipeline, which is resolution limited and not in RAW. The Z9 /does/ support alternate write mode, however the Z8 only supports split format or overflow with two cards since Z8 is CFExpress + SD and Z9 is 2x CFExpress. I am not sure how this affects write-out speeds but presumably improves it.

Personally I only shoot at 6fps in continuous for birds because anything faster is usually unnecessary (except for hummingbirds) and just creates more exposures to review/delete in post. I generally preference doing quiet single exposure (Qs) when doing wildlife to avoid any sounds, although since switching to the Z8 it's not really an issue since mirrorless is effectively silent in all modes at fairly open apertures.