Is RAW a defence against photo-trickery?

How manipulable are RAW files, beyond the usual changes one makes in RAW

converters?

 

In the Australian news today is a claimed sighting of a thylacine ("Tasmanian

tiger"), generally believed to have been extinct for 70 years. A tourist hiking

in central Tasmania saw a creature he believed was a thylacine and took a

couple of pictures. "Digital photography experts" disbelieve him because, they

say, the same pictures could be created in PS using 1930's shots of the animal,

blended with modern backgrounds.

 

I don't know what camera was used, but I guess the pix were JPEGS. If the

photographer had been able to present RAW files, would this be convincing? Or

can RAW files be manipulated in the same way as JPEGS by those "in the know"?

The raw data is not an image, so it can't "...be manipulated in the same way as JPEGS..."

One way would be to composite the fraud, then raw capture it. A technique invented maybe 30 seconds after G. Eastman sold the first roll of film.

Film isn' any less likely to be digitally manipulated--I scan in all my negatives and make digital files out of them anyway.

Canon have an image verification system (DVK-E2), but I think it costs around $700 and only works with EOS 1 series digital cameras.

 

Not many Tourists carry an EOS-1D series camera with a DVK-E2.

 

Yes, you can fake RAW files.

There's an old saying "a photo never lies, but photographers frequently do."

Tassie Tigers rule - RAW or no RAW.

I think Ellis nailed it. Ultimately it's up to the ethics (or lack thereof) of the photographer and technology - whether film or digital, RAW or Jpeg - is not the culprit.

 

Joseph Stalin famously "airbrushed" out (literally and photographically) the people who pissed him off, from the photographs in which they appeared - and did so over 50 years ago.

Thanks, everyone.

 

"Not many Tourists carry an EOS-1D series camera with a DVK-E2. "

 

I guess not, but if you were a researcher genuinely hunting for a thylacine, Loch Ness monster, bigfoot, yeti, bunyip, etc, maybe you should!

<i>Geoff said: I guess not, but if you were a researcher genuinely hunting for a thylacine, Loch Ness monster, bigfoot, yeti, bunyip, etc, maybe you should!</i>

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No, everybody knows that if you take a picture of anything like that (you forgot UFO's), it automatically reduces the the image quality to <1 megapixel, septuples the noise, and does a 300% crop of your subject. All regardless of the actual specs of your camera, film OR digital. Or at least that's the impression you would get from all of the "evidence" used by those paranormal shows on TV. :D

Also didn't some researcher in China recently crack one or more of the secure hash algorithms? Even the DVK might not be considered secure anymore.

Geoff, there are programs to write raw files for several cameras. I once made a CGI fractal in Nikon D100 raw format.

 

Steven, almost all the secure hash algorithms have been cracked in an academic sense, that is, with algorithms that run for months on 1024 processor array supercomputers.

 

The Kwanon data verification kit uses the DRM capability of SD cards to tag the files. Nikon D2X, D2H, and D200 (with the latest firmware) do it in software using the cameras main processor. They secure hash their files (both raw and JPEG, if I recall). You only have to buy a tool if you want to validate the hashed files. I've never turned this on with my D200 or D2X, so I couldn't tell you if it slowed the camera down noticeably.

If I understand all this it means DVK would actually vouch for a composited fraud.

Don - Exactly!