DNG without any drawback?

For the article [post id=282]Develop your images again with Lightroom 5[/post] i processed an already published timelapse video again with the process version 2012.

The process version 2012 has a lot advantages compared to the version 2010, especially gaining details on highlights and/or shadow partions of an image. So it made sense to develop the images from the timelapse sequemce again to improve the timelapse. I insert the url again

As you probably you from the article [post id=133]RAW,JPEG or even DNG[/post] i use Adobe DNG format for timelapse or hyperlapse sequences, since the loss in qualitiy comparing a compressed DNG to a RAW file is negligible. But you should consider the reduction in space needed, which reaches almost 1/3 of the original raw file size. Taking a 24 MB raw file from a Canon 7D this is reduces to 9-9.5 MB converting the raw to a compressed DNG file. And you’ll notice this difference in size handling 400-1000 images for a timelapse sequence.

Doing the processesing for the above timelapse sequence i had the impression that converting from DNG to full size JPEG takes more time than converting from RAW to JPEG. So i decided to try it out.

I still saved the original sequence from the timelapse of the Cologne Kranbauten in the original CR2 format, and the timelapse was already published. The sequence contains 364 single images.

Converting into the compressed DNG format took 11:09 min for all images of the sequence. This is not much, considering the reduced size on disk. Anyway you can work while converting the images.

Converting the 24 MB RAW files from the Canon 7D results in about 7 MB compressed DNG files. This means a saving in disk space for this single timelapse of rounfd about 6 GB !

But how about the impression that converting from DNG to JPEG takes a longer time?

Ok just try it out and stop the times needed for the conversion, and very fast i’m convinced that my first impression was wrong. On my [post id=102]Xeon E3 1230 V2 [/post] Lightroom needs 20:12 min (3,32 sec/image) for the conversion from RAW to full size JPEG size and 17:48 min(2,93 sec./image) from compressed DNG to full size JPEG. Adding the time to convert the images from raw to compressed DNG results in 4,77 sec./image 😉

Anyway it’s not a disadvantage too me, because you still can use your PC for brwosing, reading email or other things and the reduction in size is pretty incredible. At least for rendering timelapse videos, where you don’t need the last little bit of qualitiy even rendering a 4K video.

Too me the descision for DNG format, at least for timelapse or hyperlapse sequences clear, but what do say to DNG? I’m looking forward to your comments

ciao tuxoche