Are there any cameras with a PNG mode?

Just curious. Does any manufacturer make a camera with a PNG mode?

If the camera can handle the processing load (not small by any means

on large images) this would certainley make a better format than 8-

bit TIFF.

Never heard of one. I don't think PNG is sufficiently mainstream yet (or if it ever will be). Then there's always JPEG 2000, which might be better named JPEG 2005 since it too hasn't really made prime time.

 

You pretty much can't beat RAW for image quality, plus it doesn't need any processing. I don't know how much smaller than RAW PNG or JPEG 2000 files would be.

What's a PNG (Partially Nude Girl?)?

I think png is a fine format for archiving processed photos (although I use high quality jpeg myself) but for the camera itself I'd prefer raw. I'd rather preserve the ability to set white balance and other settings after the fact, and only raw does that. Also my impression is that raw would compress to smaller files than png, due to having 12 bits per pixel (for Bayer filter based cameras) rather than 24 or 48.

I'd be surprised if there ever will be. PNG never caught on, primarily because Web

browser makers took ages to support the format, and still don't really support them

fully. Now that GIF is no longer encumbered by patent restrictions in the US (and soon

elsewhere), I think that PNG has even lower chances. It's still seen as an obscure also-

ran format.

 

Which is a shame, since PNG offers a ton of useful features (though admittedly alpha

channel data isn't so useful for cameras) and is far more useful than a primitive 8-bit

format like GIF. But as Bob says it's doutbful it'd offer massive space savings over the

RAW or NEF or whatever formats used by camera makers today.

Canon RAW is a great format, and there are open source RAW and NEF

decoders. Just search the google.

<p>The problem is, making efficient (almost) real-time PNG compression is quite different than jpeg. This means costlier development of cameras, something not likely to happen.

 

<p>PNG might not be as popular as jpeg, but most apps support it in some form and I feel one can quite comfortably use it without compatibility problems.

 

<p><i>...RAW for image quality, plus it doesn't need any processing</i>

 

<p>Bob, can you elaborate on that? I've always thought (through practical experience) that one of the main problems with RAW is the fact that it needs to be conveted to an "RGB format", which takes time.

You only need to process RAW files to work on them. To store them Canon does some compression, but from what I'm given to understand (I don't shoot Nikon), Nikon stores them uncompressed. Since they are the RAW output from the sensor, if you store them uncompressed you don't need to process them for storage - which should speed up the process. Actually Canon also do a conversion to jpeg and store the jpeg along with the RAW file. It's possible that the conversion is so fast (done in hardware? DIGIC chip?) that it doesn't add significantly to the time taken to generate the data.

 

Storing RAW is the most efficient way of recording all the data that the sensor captures.

Thanks for the elaboration Bob, now I see your point. I've shot thousands of frames with a Canon G2 and I've read that the latest Canons (at least the 1Ds) would store a jpeg alongside with the raw, which the G2 doesn't do. However, I must somewhat disagree with you regarding the ease of the whole process, since the RAW file itself isn't very practical: you need to convert it whether you want to edit, print, post on the web etc. and the format is proprietary and Canon-specific, which, IMHO, renders the value of storing RAW files in the long term rather dubious. (as a side note: the G2 does apparently not store the ISO-speed int he exif data, something which a Nikon Coolpix 4500 does; one point for Nikon ;)

Canon RAW (at least for G2) format has been reverse engineered long time ago, so it is as proprietary as plain text. It also has non-lossy compression (unlike JPG) and it stores only as much data as needed (unlike TIFF) which makes it by far the best format for storage. A RAW file from G2 is ~2MB, it's 1/4 size of TIFF and

has exactly as much useful information.

<i>Canon RAW (at least for G2) format has been reverse engineered long time ago, so it is as proprietary as plain text</i>

 

<p>I do have some open source C code that I downloaded on the net for converting RAW images of many

different formats, but the code is far from perfect and frankly I don't have the time to do the

modifications necessary for frequent use. The fact that the format is reverse-engineered does not

automatically mean it wouldn't be proprietary, Canon could always slap lawsuits on those distributing the code and trying it out in court. Also, every manufacturer has their own RAW formats, with details differing between models by the same manufacturer. I haven't seen a library

that would be reliable, documented and support most of these formats (if you know of such a library, please informe me). Without such a library for reading the images, I doubt software support will catch on.

 

<p>The basic problem with RAW is that no matter what you do, you'll have to convert. Personally I find it much more convenient to have a file with the right cropping, color corrections, dodges and burns applied, which I then resize, sharpen and print/publish if necessary, rather than digging up the raw file, adjusting white balance, adjusting color, cropping, dodging, burning etc. A 16-bit PNG created from a G2 RAW-image is typically around 17 MB. Most digital cameras are 6 megapixels or less, so in the age of 100+ GB HDs and affordable DVD+R storage really is a minor issue with them. Incidentally, I rarely use other than jpeg with digicams, because shooting with other formats is unpractically slow, jpegs take very little space and the exif-data can be easily extracted. And as a plus, they work in practically every computer without third-party software.