This is an extract from an article entitled The Raw Flaw by Michael Reichmann and Juergen Specht which is posted at length on The Luminous Landscape
For most of the past 10 years (effectively, the entire geological age of digital SLR cameras) photographers have been almost oblivious to a lurking danger. This threat – and it is no exaggeration to call it that – can best be understood by analogy.
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Now, imagine the following scenario. We retrieve our files, find the negative or slide that we want to reprint, and then discover that it has become opaque. The image is gone or otherwise inaccessible. We still have the piece of film that originally went though the camera, but the image itself cannot be accessed! Imagine if the the company that made your original roll of film had manufactured it so that the film only fit into one type of enlarger, and that those enlargers aren't being made anymore. Or that the chemical properties of the dyes used to make that roll of color film were such that they would only interact to form an image with matching dyes in a printing paper from that same company; but – sorry, that company was sold a few years ago and the new owners decided to stop making that type of paper.
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You as a photographer have two issues to deal with. One – is the preservation of your RAW files in a physical format that will be readable into the future. There are many strategies for this that basically involve making multiple copies of your files on different media, and keeping those media safe from physical damage. If these files are copied to new media and new media types on a regular basis then you have a strategy for physical preservation.
The second issue is that of being able to actually make use of the data that's in the RAW file, and this is where we run into trouble.
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How many RAW formats are there? Believe it or not, as of mid-2005 there are more than 100 different RAW formats in existence.
This alone is cause for concern. Companies come and go, and even those that persist often orphan old formats. There are in fact RAW formats in existence for which no manufacturer's software is currently available. And that's after less than 10 years.
Then there's the ugly matter of encryption. This was brought to the fore when in early 2005 Nikon released its flagship camera, the D2x, with encrypted white balance data.
Now, Nikon isn't the first, or the only company to encrypt their RAW files. But because they did so in such an intransigent way it has acted as a tipping point for the entire industry. Nikon owners are furious with the company, and quite a backlash has developed.
But let's apportion blame fairly. Other companies have done the same. In late 2003, for example, Sony encrypted the RAW files for its then new F828 digicam. It took only 3 days until the encryption was broken, but that's beside the point.
Companies like Canon and others are not free of guilt. Most camera makers use tricks to hide their data. Fortunately there are some very smart programmers out there, and to our knowledge none of these software tricks remain more than a trivial annoyance to anyone that really wants to crack them.
But, in the US at least, with the Millennium Copyright Act, the game has changed. Simply put, anyone that cracks encrypted or otherwise protected intellectual property is subject to criminal prosecution. And, since it possibly can be argued that the code (not content) in an encrypted or "protected" RAW file belongs to its creator (meaning the camera maker), any company or programmer breaking that code needs have liability concerns.
Similarly the proposed European Software Patents Protocol could mean that RAW formats will be patent protected and therefore not freely usable, even for interoperability purposes. If this comes to pass, European photographers could lose free access rights to their own photographs.
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With this as background, the OpenRAW Working Group was founded.
The goal of OpenRAW is to encourage image preservation and give creative choice on how images are processed to the creators of the images – us – photographers.
This group is an amalgam of photographers and other interested people founded to create awareness of these issues, suggest a solution, and provide coordination for these efforts.
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The OpenRAW Working Group believes that open file formats encourage innovation. OpenRAW is not asking manufacturers to disclose the trade secrets of their sensor construction or their firmware, only the structure of the RAW data recorded when the photographer presses the shutter button, because:
1. There is no guarantee that manufacturers won't change their camera software support policies and abandon older cameras from current software.
2. There is no guarantee that manufacturers will exist in the future. (Consider Contax and their groundbreaking full frame Digital N camera of just a few years ago – now completely orphaned. Could your camera suffer a similar fate one day?)
3. There is no guarantee that a software program will execute correctly in the future. So even if we keep old hardware and software around, there is no guarantee that it will work properly on future computer systems.
4. There is no guarantee that support will be added to new conversion software for older and discontinued models.
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The time has come for us as digital photographers, and purchasers of equipment from the major manufacturers, to speak out. Historically, when people with a common cause, a just cause, speak out, their combined voices are heard.
Below is an open letter to all of the major digital camera makers. If you agree with its basic premise, we urge you copy it off the screen and paste it into an email to the camera maker of your choice, or to each of them for that matter.
Dear Sirs,
I am writing to add my name to the list of photographers from around the world that are requesting that your company, as well as the other major digital camera makers, adopt a policy of open documentation of RAW formats, past, present and future.
I am also requesting that your company adopt a universal RAW format. The DNG format has been put forward as such a possible standard, but we are willing to accept any truly open standard as the industry may agree upon.
I support the position on this taken by the OpenRAW Working Group (http://www.openRAW.org/).
Please add my voice to those that are against proprietary and encrypted RAW file formats. I urge you to act swiftly to support your customers so as to ensure our continued loyalty to your company's brands and products.
Sincerely,
Andre Nantel
