DSLRUsers.com

Hey people,

There's an interesting discussion going on over at Slashdot about Nikon's Encryption of White Balance data and someone said this in their post:

"First, I found that Nikon was misleading about the compressed NEF files (they are supposed to be lossless raw data, but they're not). Then I found that they were also misleading about how the raw files were produced (raw files are suppose to contain the straight CCD sensor data, but Nikon applies a median filter to the data before it is saved). Sort of pissed me off because I do astrophotography and the filter wipes out stars and other features. And now, they're trying to pull this vomitous crap."

Is the part about the sensor data common knowledge? or is it rubbish?

Original discussion link is here:
http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/04/23/2050249.shtml?tid=93&tid=155

Cheers
- beej

There is a work around for this problem - found on a French site:

”- set your camera in "dark subtracted" mode (also called "noise reduction") - at the end of the regular exposure, the D70 will take a dark image at the same duration of the previoulsy acquired image.

- during the dark acquisition, turn off the camera (Nikon said there is no damage to do this). You can see then the green led flashing indicating that an image is being written on the card. That's the raw image, and this image has NOT been median filtered... The difference is astonishing.”

sirhc55 wrote:... The difference is astonishing.”

Astonishing as in the camera no longer works?!

The data straight off the sensor would not make any sense to anyone without some sort of intervention, it'll merely be a series of number values relating to luminosities at each of the photosites - the job of the raw converter software converts these into light values into brightness, and interprets colour info, etc.

Peter Inova's D70 ebook has a comprehensive section on the whole raw thing - if it interests you, I suggest picking up a copy to read.

Chi - those were not my words but those from this site and it includes pics of what you get!

http://valerie.desnoux.free.fr/neat/nikonD70.htm