Today’s Question: As a follow-up to your discussion of the Adobe DNG file format, what is your opinion of setting the camera to use DNG rather than a proprietary raw capture [for cameras that support DNG as a capture format]?
Tim’s Quick Answer: As long as you don’t need to make use of camera features (if applicable) that require a proprietary raw capture format, I think it is perfectly fine to capture in DNG (Adobe Digital Negative).
More Detail: As noted in yesterday’s Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter, while there are potential advantages to converting raw captures to the Adobe DNG format, I personally prefer to retain the original proprietary raw captures rather than converting.
That said, some cameras do support native capture in the Adobe DNG format. As long as doing so doesn’t cause you to be unable to make use of special camera features that are important to you, I think capturing in DNG is perfectly fine. And I should hasten to add that in my experience very few photographers make use of the types of special features that require a proprietary raw capture format.
In my view there frankly isn’t a strong argument one way or the other when it comes to choosing between Adobe DNG and a proprietary raw capture format. If one of the potential advantages for one over the other is compelling to you, then you should choose based on that.
I personally prefer to use the proprietary raw capture format, in part so that updating a backup when there have been metadata changes only requires backing up the very small XMP “sidecar” file rather than backing up an entire DNG file. But that is frankly a minor issue. Either option can be perfectly fine depending on your preference and workflow needs.
