I recently upgraded from my ol' trusty 30d to a 5DIII. I have not upgraded to LR4 yet (still using 3.6) because my PC will need to be upgraded before I do that.
In the meantime I have been converting my 5DIII CR2 RAW files to DNG so that I can process them on LR3.6 (LR 3.6 not compatible with 5DIII RAWs). Eventually I plan to upgrade to LR 4 after I’ve upgraded my PC.
So I have been converting to DNG out of necessity and really don’t know a lot about the format.
Storing both the RAW and DNG files is taking up double the disk space. I am wondering if I should delete the RAW files and keep the DNG files or is there a compelling reason why I should hold on to them both.
Although I love LR it is not beyond the realm of possibility (remote that it may be) that Canon may improve their DPP software to make it the program of choice. It appears to me that keeping only the DNG file locks me in to using Adobe products for RAW conversion of the DNG files.
Also, it seems like the DNG files are a bit smaller that the CR2 files – do I lose any useful (or potentially useful in the future) information by converting to DNG.
Thanks in advance for all your help.
1) In time you will upgrade the computer. The difference between LR3 and LR4 is quite remarkable - I think it is well worth the upgrade (both the software and hardware).
2) I use only LR (no CS and no PSE), and I don't use DPP. I doubt that DPP will ever get to where LR is (perhaps working on the sensors would be effort put to better use).
3) Since I use LR only, there seems to be no advantage for me to convert CR2 files to DNG. It would just take more time.
4) I do convert some CR2 files to TIFF, but that is just for focus stacking (which Zerene Stacker requires).
5) I presently hold the very faint hope that there may be improvements in DPP or LR that will enable more to be extracted from the RAW file. The best candidate for this would be DPP, and it surely won't be extracting this extra information (if it's there) from a DNG. However, see point 3) above.
7) Interestingly your last question did hint at what I noted in 6). However this is not why I don't convert to DNG.
Keep the CR2 files if you can afford the space.
Glenn