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Thread: To DGN or not?

  1. #1
    BPN Member Steve Uffman's Avatar
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    Default To DGN or not?

    I have been using LR3 and LR2 for over a year now. When I recently plunged into learning CS5, I also took a refresher course on LR3 and re visited several books including some of Scott Kelby's work. They all seemed to be pretty universal in touting the advantages of DGN, so I recently started the convert to DGN as part of my standard workflow upon importing. I did so after the pro arguments seemed with merit. It also had merit when my database became corrupted and having to relink the raws with the other files was aggravating (although not really that hard). DGN would have prevented that one step in the recover. Made sense to me.

    Since then, I have seen some opposing views to using DGN here-also with merit.

    Actual practice does show that it takes less storage but more time in importing. Curious whether anybody on here actually uses DGN and what are their thoughts?

    many thanks

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    DGN files are a 2D/3D Cad file created by Bentley microstations.

    I think you meant DNG files...
    I use them for Leica M8 and M9 created images. They are the format used by Leica. But these are scenics or images being converted to digitial negatives for contact printing. Not for bird images...

    I don't use them for Canon created images - I just keep the raw.
    I could see one advantage -- long term retention if you are concerned about continuation of proprietary formats like Canon's raw format.

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    There are sometimes circumstances that a DNG is not the best option, specifically if the raw converter in use actually uses proprietary meta data to do corrections of various sorts (e.g. lens corrections, camera profiles, etc). You can always choose to embed the original raw file along with the DNG and not have to worry about it. The DNG is the closest thing to an open standard, though I think some companies have reservations about adopting DNG to withhold "that something extra" or at least bill it as such.

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    BPN Member Steve Uffman's Avatar
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    Thanks Chris for the response. I can very easily start back keeping images as Raw. That worked very well until I read more literature. I shoot a canon 7d. did notice that while storage was much better than I forecast on the DNG, the conversion time was a concern. Since I am headed to South America for 3 weeks soon, not sure I want to spend that much time in conversion if the benefits are not very obvious....

    great to hear how others weigh in

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    The advantages of DNG are: 1) no need to be worried about propietary camera raw formats; 2) DNG files are significantly smaller than raw files; 3) changes to images can be written directly to DNG files without having to create separate sidecar XMP files to store this data. Having said that, if you make it to the top of serious ccontests, they will probably ask you for the original raw file out of the camera, denying that DNG is a raw file. There are camera brands like Leica, that shoot DNG as propietary raw files. I usually convert raws into DNGs upon importing them in Lightroom for family shot or other stuff that I shoot for fun. However, I keep the original NEF for serious bird photography.

    Giulio

  6. #6
    Robert Amoruso
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    Steve,

    I would agree with the about comments on keeping the RAW files as you never know. I do use DNG as storage is cheap and my time isn't so I do not need another step in my workflow.

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