brainstorms

Sunday April 24, 2005

nikon: a raw attitude part deux

nikon released a clumsily written advisory that is supposed to clarify matters with facts and explanations. it is basically a spin document that manages to badly say very little. [also see photoshopnews discussion] it several times refers to bona fide developers [a very strange qualification these days] and nikon's proprietary sdk such developers are allowed to get if they ask nicely enough. this is the line i find the most interesting:

Nikon’s preservation of its unique technology in the NEF file is employed as an action that protects the uniqueness of the file.

very strange. no technical details on how this is supposed to work, except perhaps through obscurity.

[evidently, this line of reasoning did not occur to (say) canon. here is a discussion of canon's published crw/ciff format.]

related links: openraw - digital image preservation through open documentation.
adobe dng resources (adobe: whatever happened to that open source dng library?)

[image note: multiple exposure spinning top, from a series of images for holzmann's spin. nikon equipment, velvia.]