Digital Camera News, 5/11/08

Adobe working to get DNG recognized as the RAW shooting standard

Imaging software king Adobe made another move in their push toward a standardized, cross-platform RAW format. John Nack, a frequent blogger and Senior Product Manager with Abode, provided details last week on the company's submission of its open-source Digital Negative (DNG) format for RAW files to international standards body the ISO (the same people who govern standards for sensor sensitivity) for recognition.

"DNG lets Adobe support new cameras in older versions of Camera Raw without having to constantly revise and test those versions," Nack writes, citing one of the primary benefits (from Adobe's perspective, at least) of a vendor-independent for file format that could be written and read by cameras from different manufacturers. Adobe is currently faced with the daunting task of supporting unique proprietary formats for 175 cameras; the demands of legacy support for this format proliferation have some photographers worried about whether they'll still be able to access and work with their images far into the future.

In spite of all of this, as well as the allure of smaller file sizes with DNG than most users experience with proprietary RAW formats, few camera makers have been lining up to get on board with Adobe's standard, which was first made available several years ago. ISO recognition of DNG would likely leverage broader support for the format and help encourage the move away from proprietary RAW formats. 

Interestingly, Nack also revealed Adobe's plans to provide a codec allowing Windows Vista users to view DNG files directly within the operating system without the need for conversion.

Nack's complete blog entry provides the complete story.

(Source: PhotographyBlog.com)

Fujifilm FinePix F100fd firmware update corrects banding issues

Shortly following the retail release of Fuji's anticipated FinePix F100fd compact camera, users in several online forums were reporting intermittent but intrusive issues with pink frame-edge banding showing up in some shots. After looking into the issue, Fuji has released v.1.02 of its F100fd firmware, which provides a fix for the issue.

According to the firmware update information, the infamous pink banding showed up on the left edge of some images shot at ISO 400 or in the "Natural and Flash" scene mode.

Fujifilm's global support site has links to the file download and instructions for installing the firmware fix.

Sigma releases new firmware for its DP1 compact

Sigma also offered up an issue-correcting firmware update this week for its high-profile DP1 advanced compact.

Sigma's second firmware update for the DP1 since the camera's launch irons out an accidental file deletion problem that manifest itself when powering down the camera while files are being selected for removal.

Visit Sigma's DP1 mini-site to download the latest firmware version.