More RAW Camera Support Coming

[harcosparky]

Maybe camera manufacturers need to adopt a standard format???

I mean is it fair to demand that one company ( Apple ) create support for, god knows how many camera manufacturers?

I was mad at Canon when they adopted a new format from the Canon 10D ( .CRW ) to the Canon EOS 30D ( .CR2 )

 

[ChrisA]

...rather than try and release RAW support for 50 cameras all at once, why not break it down? ie if they already have 25 done, push them out the door rather than make people continue to wait while the other 25 are finished.

You are right, what needs to change is Apple process.

Currently RAW support has been updated when new releases of Mac OS X come out. Raw support is handled in a core library that iPhoto, Aperture, Preview and other all use. They need to bust out that Library so they can send out timely updatres independantly of the rest of Mac OS X.

 

[Rocketman]

You are right, what needs to change is Apple process.

Currently RAW support has been updated when new releases of Mac OS X come out. Raw support is handled in a core library that iPhoto, Aperture, Preview and other all use. They need to bust out that Library so they can send out timely updatres independantly of the rest of Mac OS X.

There are a few, not so many things, Apple deals with that causes real input snarls or choke points. Compatibility with a growing morass of camera file formats is certainly one of them.

Steve should tell manufacturers the top 5 or so file formats they prefer manufacturers use and make a mini-SDK for that. It would be less work than wrangling cats.

Rocketman

 

[triplefinger]

Epson RD-1

It may not be an OS thing... I have an Epson RD-1

Lightroom opens both the native ERF files and converted DNG files, Aperture supports neither.

I hope they get to that tiny niche of the market.

mike

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)



I hope so but don't know. After giving it more thought it makes sense that it would be with the OS but I just don't know.

 

[harcosparky]

There are a few, not so many things, Apple deals with that causes real input snarls or choke points. Compatibility with a growing morass of camera file formats is certainly one of them.

Steve should tell manufacturers the top 5 or so file formats they prefer manufacturers use and make a mini-SDK for that. It would be less work than wrangling cats.

Rocketman

I guess that was what I was trying to say, though I think a better solution is for the camera industry to adopt a single RAW format, so that the consumer will be confident that any camera they pick up will work.

As a photographer I would look to the camera manufacturer for a solution, not the OS manufacturer. If I bought a camera and it was not compatible with my OS, I would return it. I would also call the camera manufacturer and let them know clearly that they lost your business because they were incompatible.

Of course as a consumer I also know to look into compatibility issues with hardware I purchase.

 

[Small White Car]

The one I am referring to is not on the Aperture list you linked.

The camera that captured the HD motion image was a Sony HDR-CX7, which created a file of the form xxxxx.MTS. The file sizes measure in Gigabytes.

Quicktime Player 7.3.1 did not handle it.

Well, Aperture wouldn't have anything to do with video formats Quicktime will play. I don't know about this one, but this sounds like a format Sony made up and would have to allow Apple to use it in their software. Knowing Sony they're probably keeping it to themselves so that only their software can use it.

I'm just guessing on most of this, but it IS a fact that the photo people would have zero to do with this.

It may not be an OS thing... I have an Epson RD-1

Lightroom opens both the native ERF files and converted DNG files, Aperture supports neither.

It is on the OS level. Just because Adobe chose to build it into Lightroom doesn't change anything at Apple. Adobe is free to do whatever they want.

 

[Small White Car]

I guess that was what I was trying to say, though I think a better solution is for the camera industry to adopt a single RAW format, so that the consumer will be confident that any camera they pick up will work.

I don't think you really understand what a RAW file is. Doing this would mean that all cameras would have the same exact chip and electronics inside. Besides the lens, every camera would be nearly identical.

Besides patents making this unlikely, is that really the sort of choice you want to have? One basic camera put into different company's cases?

There IS a format that does what you're asking. It's called TIF and many cameras use it. The access to RAW data is still something that the most dedicated photographers demand. And that's fine, they should have access to it. But they need to understand that they're getting into something more complicated than TIFs or JPGs and that complication comes at a price. This sort of delay and non-standards are all part of the price. If they don't like it they can always fall back on the more "consumer-friendly" TIF format.

 

[spazzcat]

....
There IS a format that does what you're asking. It's called TIF and many cameras use it. The access to RAW data is still something that the most dedicated photographers demand. And that's fine, they should have access to it. But they need to understand that they're getting into something more complicated than TIFs or JPGs and that complication comes at a price. This sort of delay and non-standards are all part of the price. If they don't like it they can always fall back on the more "consumer-friendly" TIF format.

Most people will just move to Lightroom. I am giving them another month or so and I will move on if they don't add D300 support. If Adobe can have support for cameras before they are out on the street. Apple should be able to as well.

 

[Small White Car]

Most people will just move to Lightroom. I am giving them another month or so and I will move on if they don't add D300 support. If Adobe can have support for cameras before they are out on the street. Apple should be able to as well.

I wasn't talking about Adobe vs. Apple but the idea of "there should be one RAW standard" that had been mentioned. That's not really possible.

But as to your point, my father (a pro photographer) already went with Lightroom simply because it ran on older/slower machines than Aperture does. I wonder how many people that affected already?

 

[goodcow]

Why is it Apple's responsibility to create support for each camera to begin with?

1) How does this work on Windows? I assume a camera comes with some kind of driver disc to support it.
2) If yes, then why don't the camera manufacturers have OSX drivers as well so Apple doesn't have to handle this on a case by case basis themselves?

 

[Rocketman]

Why is it Apple's responsibility to create support for each camera to begin with?

Theoretically, within the OS, none.

But Apple is also a software vendor with Aperture, iPhoto, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, etc. The more devices' content that software can ingest, the more people will buy Macintoshes to use their camera with, movie or still. It could be argued this is a marginal feature. That said, for a fraction of folks it is the straw that breaks the camel's back, or compels a Mac purchase vs. a Wintel purchase.

This raises the question of if these cameras become useable by simply installing Winblows on your Mac I suppose.

Rocketman

 

[Azurael]

I don't know of any camera manufacturers making RAW-capable cameras who don't supply both Mac and Windows versions of any software required for RAW conversion, Fuji do, Canon do, Nikon do, Olympus do, etc - simply because so much of the target market for these devices use Macs. Therefore, having Windows doesn't help at all...

However, I don't know of many people who are happy with the manufacturer-supplied software. Most people would much rather have the improved quality of ACR through Photoshop or Lightroom... I don't know what OS X's built in RAW conversion is like because I've never used it

 

[xStep]

The camera that captured the HD motion image was a Sony HDR-CX7, which created a file of the form xxxxx.MTS. The file sizes measure in Gigabytes.

Quicktime Player 7.3.1 did not handle it.

That is a video camera so you need to be using a video editing application such as iMovie 08, or one of the newer Final Cut applications that can handle the AVCHD video codec.

 

[CalfCanuck]

I guess that was what I was trying to say, though I think a better solution is for the camera industry to adopt a single RAW format, so that the consumer will be confident that any camera they pick up will work...

I think the issue is that there are many sensors out there, with different characteristics. Saving data to a format which doesn't match your camera's sensors means throwing away potentially useful data.

So every "RAW" format is different, but that's because the camera companies are trying to give us better images at the expense of universal standards. Not sure I think that's a bad thing, either.

 

[harcosparky]

The one I am referring to is not on the Aperture list you linked.

The camera that captured the HD motion image was a Sony HDR-CX7, which created a file of the form xxxxx.MTS. The file sizes measure in Gigabytes.

Quicktime Player 7.3.1 did not handle it.

The main problem being we like the camera so much we wil probably buy 4 of them and that's a lot of content to injest. It would be handy if we could simply import the files directly rather than "play" them real-time through the camera.

Rocketman

I'd never think you would find a Video Camcorder on a list of cameras that are supported using RAW image formats.

 

[volvoben]

Why is it Apple's responsibility to create support for each camera to begin with?

1) How does this work on Windows? I assume a camera comes with some kind of driver disc to support it.
2) If yes, then why don't the camera manufacturers have OSX drivers as well so Apple doesn't have to handle this on a case by case basis themselves?

This is not at all how it works on windows; on XP, microsoft released support for a few formats (nikon and canon, not sure how many cameras) a few years back, but that's just for viewing thumbnails and previews, and I've heard nothing since then. Perhaps vista has new support, i have no idea as i don't really use windows. There are no 'drivers' for raw image decoding that come with your camera, it may come with software, but it's not nearly as simple as a 'driver'. As I understand it you have to reverse engineer the format because the manufacturers would prefer you use their solution. On windows you may get faster support, but only if your software developer implements it (I use adobe who are rather quick, so adobe users on windows would get the support at the same time as I do).

It's not an efficient model, I wish camera manufacturers would just release open source information when new models are released to facilitate high quality and quickly released support, but as it stands now it's the job of the software/OS coders to figure it out. People will buy the cameras assuming their software will work. Adobe is quite speedy with updates to camera raw, really putting Apple to shame in this department. I don't tend to buy cameras right after they're released, but in the case of the very popular D3 and D300, it's been 2 months. If I was making real money on my photography and I didn't have support for my camera after 2 months I'd probably begin considering the competition.

 

[Callsign Razor]

Why is it Apple's responsibility to create support for each camera to begin with?

1) How does this work on Windows? I assume a camera comes with some kind of driver disc to support it.
2) If yes, then why don't the camera manufacturers have OSX drivers as well so Apple doesn't have to handle this on a case by case basis themselves?

Microsoft doesn't provide RAW support it's up to the camera manufacture or an ISV like Adobe to provide RAW support.

Nikon for example bundles Mac and Windows versions of an application called PictureProject with cameras, I've never used it so I can't comment on how well it works.