1. I just took a quick look inside a DNG from one of Leica's new Leica T cameras:
    1. The camera firmware version number shows as "1.02", so what should be production firmware.
    2. The camera name shows as "Leica T (Typ 701)"
    3. The image data is 12-bit. There is no compression used in the DNG I looked at. Somewhat unusually, the data is appears to be packed, four 12-bit values in 6 bytes, rather than the more typical one 12-bit value in a 16-bit location. This is allowed by the DNG spec, but isn't often used. This means that the file size is approximately 24.5 MB vs. what would otherwise be approximately 33.6 MB.
    4. The DNG version is 1.3, a higher revision that that the 1.1 that most previous Leica cameras have used. There is a reason for this - DNG 1.3 allows for opcodes, which Leica use for lens correction.
    5. In the DNG I looked at, which was shot with a 18-56 Vario-Elmar lens, lens correction is done by a single "WarpRectilinear" operation in the DNG. Other lenses (or the same lens at a different focal length), might use other codes.
    6. There is a single Leica makernote.
    Generally, the DNG seems to be quite standard - it happily works with current versions of all of my software - PhotoRaw, AccuRaw, AccuRaw Monochrome and Cornerfix "out of the box".

    The only slightly interesting thing I noticed is the color rendering in the DNG. When I looked at Sean Reid's images in his review of the camera, I commented to him that the colors looked over saturated, especially the reds. Interesting, looking at a DNG alongside a JPEG preview, the JPEG preview is much more subdued than a DNG rendering using the Leica embedded color profile, especially in the reds. However, this is probably nothing that couldn't be fixed with a custom camera profile.
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  2. A lot of people have found out that, contrary to what they might have assumed, you can't import raw files into Lightroom Mobile on the iPad. Only JPEGs are supported. To import raws, you need to go via a desktop machine. Which is not much use if you're in the field with only an iPad.

    Fortunately, there an easy work-round with PhotoRaw - here's the step-by-step instructions:

    1. Install PhotoRaw on your iPad. Note that PhotoRaw Lite won't work for this.
    2. Import the raw files stored on your iPad into PhotoRaw.
    3. Batch export them - touch the batch button (the gears), select all the files, then touch the action button (the arrow), select JPEG quality, and touch save.
    4. Your images are now saved on the iPad as JPEG at full resolution, and can be imported into Lightroom Mobile just as you would any other JPEG
    Easy!
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  3. Adobe's Lightroom Mobile is out. There are numbers of "first looks" and reviews on various sites, e.g. at MacWorld. I won't go into what Lightroom Mobile is and is not - the mainstream sites are doing that already - but there is one thing that the mainstream haven't picked on. That thing is that Adobe's Lossy DNG format finally starts to make some kind of sense. Well, sort of.

    In a post back in January 2012, when Lossy DNG was introduced, I discussed the new format in not very complimentary terms. In fact, as a replacement for raw formats, I called it an "engineering abomination". But I also noted that as a replacement for JPEG rather than as a replacement for a raw format, it had some useful features. But the format remained a bit of a puzzle - for archival purposes, it was a dog, as Adobe themselves acknowledge, but as a replacement for JPEG, the question was who was going to adopt it? One obvious possible adopter would be the cameras companies as an in-camera format, but the camera companies, at least the significant players, were always unlikely to adopt something with an Adobe label on it.

    The answer to this puzzle appears to be that Adobe themselves had plans for it. It appears the Lightroom Mobile uses lossy DNG as its format on the iPad. So when Lightroom Mobile talks about "raw", what they actually mean is Adobe lossy DNG as created by one of the Adobe desktop products. Aka, what is really a JPEG format on steroids rather than a raw format. Which in some ways is actually quite clever. It's not at all clear that this was the plan all along, but if it wasn't good long term planning back then, it's sure good improvisation now.

    But is this clever in the long term? In the short term, this is certainly going to be good for Adobe - at least for Adobe's share price, which of course is very good for all of the employees on stock option schemes. The market loves the cloud, and Lightroom Mobile is very obviously designed to drive cloud adoption; signing up for one of Adobe's cloud based subscription schemes is the only way to get Lightroom Mobile. In fact, if I was in my Hermès-silk-tie-wearing-strategy-consultant role, I'd probably recommend this as a strategy, at least in the short term. But I'm not so sure that this is clever in the long term. It's already possible to run a full raw converter on an iPad. The early versions of my product, PhotoRaw, was frankly a novelty on the iPad 1; it was just too slow to be useful outside of niche situations. But a current version of PhotoRaw, which is way faster than the early versions even on an iPad 1, running on an iPad Air - the combination is a practical way of editing images in a lot of situations. In a few years, stand-alone raw developers on tablets will be mainstream. At that point, Lightroom Mobile may well look like a distraction rather than a smart idea.


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Author of AccuRaw, PhotoRaw, CornerFix, pcdMagic, pcdtojpeg, dcpTool, WinDat Opener and occasional photographer....
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