I'll admit up front that I don't know a lot about this subject but it seems to me the camera makers would be more likely to include a DNG option once it's accepted by the ISO. Until then it's someone else's format so the camera makers feel they might as well stick with their own.
Unfortunately the problem is likely to be a bit circular with not a lot of action likely to be taken on standardization of DNG, or some other format, in this context unless the big camera boys make the right noises.
So to suggest that camera makes should wait for the standardization of a format before adopting it won't work.
A lot of effort is going to be needed to bring a very unwilling bride and groom together for their nuptials.
However since what is wanted is a good and constructive thing a shot gun would not be appropriate for the wedding.
It is only going to work if the camera makers see, appreciate, and accept the benefits of what is being proposed.
With regard to DNG itself is a rapidly maturing format with considerable flexibility and utility and could be an excellent choice for a standardized RAW format.
In reference to Jeff's comment on how DNG is changing - so is every other useful format.
JPEG and TIFF are regularly being updated - it is just that the ISO controls the process.
One of the key issues here is ensuring continued compatibility between newer versions and older versions.
So, in contradistinction to several posts decrying DNG because it is "changing", we want useful formats to continue to be updated and upgraded because doing this maks them even more useful with time.
The bigger Digital Asset Management problem is growing every second with formats being orphaned all the time including sound, video, graphics, and of course RAW photographic formats. Trillions of documents and files of various nature are already, to all practical purposes, orphaned and not accessible. Perhaps, if you have the budget and time of a large government agency and acces to both the software and hardware that made that particular format and you are able to get it working it is ,perhaps, possible to port information from one format to another.
For most of us though software that ran on Windows95, remember that?, so recently and is not currently supported on newer hardware and operating systems is gone for us.
I don't myself have access to a system that could run Windows95.
Offhand, I don't know anyone who does.
With regard to cameras dozens of first-generation RAW formats are already orphaned not least because their manufacturers are out of business and no-one else is prepared to support their formats now.
On another note, the third-party RAW converters, generally try to maintain backward compatibility of as many formats as possible but currently I doubt many will add dead formats now because very few individuals will be using those cameras.
The problem is that millions (?trillions) of images may be residing on hard drives completely inaccessible because no software can currently open them.
The point of the current exercise is to prevent this problem proliferating to truly catastrophic levels.
Having a open format RAW would be the first step in safeguarding our precious images (nothing necessarily to do with financial worth - but for many it would be) but bullet-proof back-ups and archives are also required if we are not lose our images.
Basically we are in the unenviable position of negatives of my grandmother shot in 1910 surviving for another hundred years and my super-dooper digital RAW images dying a death on an expired hard drive or having nothing to read them with in a few years.
Even companies like Canon, Adobe, Nikon, and Phase One are not immune from the extraordinarily brutal Darwinian process governing business in the digital age. Remember Kodak and IBM - they WERE truly iconic multinational companies that at one time almost defined business.
Kodak is dead and buried, and IBM: so invisible currently that I am not sure whether they exist anymore!
So remember that nothing is forever and if we, both as individuals, and as a group, do not protect our interests no one else will.
Tony Jay
