Digital Negative Files

Hello!!!

Is there any disadvantage to image quality and editing ability converting from RAW (NEF) to DNG in Lightroom?

If this has been discussed elsewhere the I'd appreciate if you could point the thread out to me as I searched but did not find anything on WP.

Thanks!!

John

Lightroom works on raw files more efficiently than on DNG files. If you edit a raw, then LR just makes txt changes to the sidecar file, while if you edit a DNG then it will resave the entire new DNG (as well as the old) and your backup files will get ginormous pretty quickly.

Bill

Thanks Bill, I did not know that. Sounds like a bit of a waste of space...

I can be if you do lots of tinkering with your images. Why not just keep the raw?

Bill

I am happy with RAW (NEF) but spoke to a guy whom said DNG was the way forward as it is open source and therefore a better way to save files in the long run.

I never considered it so I wanted to check it out here instead of just agreeing with the opinion of the guy I talked to!

If there was no disadvantage then I would convert to DNG for the sake of it, but since I don't think NEF will disappear and I will waste storage space with DNG...there is really no point in converting on my opinion...

Thanks for your input!!