RAW format of D-Lux 5?

[bcorton]

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Greetings all,

 

I'm tempted to upgrade from my fun but noisy little D-Lux 3 to either the LX-5 or the D-Lux 5. I know that Panasonic uses a proprietary RAW format, and that some few here have written that the D-Lux 5 saves its RAW files in DNG. If that is true, it might sway me to the D-Lux 5. But where did that knowledge come from? I can find it nowhere in the Leica literature. I do find that the X1 uses DNG, but not the D-Lux 5.

 

Can someone enlighten me?

 

Brent

[Rusted Chrome]

I just got my D-Lux 5 this afternoon and took it out shooting. I won't be home to load the files on the computer until tomorrow to see what the format is. It would be nice if it was DNG format but I recall one of the review sites being unable to post RAW samples as Lightroom 3 wouldn't read them.

 

I read on another thread today that someone renamed the LX5 RAW files to ".DNG" and Lightroom read them fine, so maybe they are just using a different extension for DNG files?

 

I'f nobody else chimes in, I'll report my findings tomorrow.

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[Rusted Chrome]

I checked and the D-Lux 5 saves the raw files as .RWL

 

This may just be re-named DNG files as on the LX5 but I haven't had a chance to check.

[chuckw]

OK, this is interesting! I have owned a DL5 for a grand total of two days and all of the files that I have imported so far have been imported with Lightroom 3 using the convert to DNG option with the import. After reading these posts I got curious so I opened some new DL5 files (which by-the-way have an RWL extension) in Photoshop CS5 and made some edits in Adobe Camera Raw. I was somewhat surprised to see that side car files were indeed created! So, apparently, Adobe does not recognize these files as true DNG files.

 

I guess the simple solution, if you want DNG files, is to do what I had been doing originally and allow Lightroom to convert them with import.

[Shootist]

OK, this is interesting! I have owned a DL5 for a grand total of two days and all of the files that I have imported so far have been imported with Lightroom 3 using the convert to DNG option with the import. After reading these posts I got curious so I opened some new DL5 files (which by-the-way have an RWL extension) in Photoshop CS5 and made some edits in Adobe Camera Raw. I was somewhat surprised to see that side car files were indeed created! So, apparently, Adobe does not recognize these files as true DNG files.

 

I guess the simple solution, if you want DNG files, is to do what I had been doing originally and allow Lightroom to convert them with import.

 

Thanks for that. Funny though the LX5 files have RW2 as the extension. So the extension between the cameras are slightly different.

[Shootist]

I checked and the D-Lux 5 saves the raw files as .RWL

 

This may just be re-named DNG files as on the LX5 but I haven't had a chance to check.

 

Although you can rename the files with a DNG extension they aren't really DNG file. Sandymc has lookat them and they are missed some of the DNG fields.

[ho_co]

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Just tried renaming files from the D-Lux 4. Same thing happens.

 

Got curious when I realized that LX3 and D-Lux 4 RAW extensions didn't change with the move to LX5 and D-Lux 5, but stayed RW2 and RWL.

 

So I renamed an RWL file to DNG. Bridge and Photoshop both recognized it without problem, without any warnings. Everything worked as if it were a DNG until I opened it, at which time an XMP file was created as usual with non-DNGs.

[wda]

Mine import seamlessly into LR3 as DNG. Yet there is no definition of Raw file type in the sparse documentation for the DLux5.

[Shootist]

Mine import seamlessly into LR3 as DNG. Yet there is no definition of Raw file type in the sparse documentation for the DLux5.

 

Are you sure you don't have the option to convert to DNG checked on LR.

[MPJMP]

I'm a bit dissappointed in this. I thought the specs for the DL5 said it wrote in DNG format (as all other Leica digital products do). Maybe this can be a future firmware "upgrade."

[mjh]

I thought the specs for the DL5 said it wrote in DNG format (as all other Leica digital products do).

All the Leica products built and developed by Leica do, those built and developed by Panasonic (D-Lux, C-Lux, and Digilux) do not.

 

And no, the specs didn’t claim the raw format was DNG.

[Shootist]

I'm a bit dissappointed in this. I thought the specs for the DL5 said it wrote in DNG format (as all other Leica digital products do). Maybe this can be a future firmware "upgrade."

 

That was a speculation, as we know now, and not one reviewer ever mentioned what the RAW format was. Not even Steve Huff.

 

I doubt the camera is capable of writing real DNG files.

[wda]

Are you sure you don't have the option to convert to DNG checked on LR.

Correct. Although I am importing the files as DNG, they appear as RWL. I guess Adobe and Leica haven't caught up yet. Or maybe they never will and they will remain RWL!

Edited October 22, 2010 by wda

[bcorton]

Thanks to everyone for replying. Too bad the D-Lux 5 doesn't write in DNG, but I'm not surprised to find that the belief that it could was a misunderstanding or speculation. Thanks.

 

Brent

[hhanebeck]

I'm a bit dissappointed in this. I thought the specs for the DL5 said it wrote in DNG format (as all other Leica digital products do). Maybe this can be a future firmware "upgrade."

 

That is a great idea! I have shot DNG with the X1 for a while now and was hugely disappointed when I saw the RWL results coming out of the new V-Lux 2. The conversion does not work well in LR3 e.g. standard B&W translated into dynamic color and the shots were so grainy that my $30 underwater camera puts them to shame.

 

Not sure how to remedy this. The only solution seems to process RWL in PS Elements and DNG in LR3. Can anyone offer a better choice?

[ho_co]

Welcome to the forum, hh! It's a good question but raises a lot of possibilities, and I'm not sure just what difficulty you're running into. Current versions of LR3 and Photoshop both use the same DNG converter; I assume the current version of Photoshop Elements does as well, but I'm not sure.

 

If you like an earlier conversion to DNG, I think the current version of the free DNG Converter offers you a choice of which older conversion you prefer (the converter in Photoshop does that).

 

Starting with DNG Converter 5.4 IIRC, RWL and DNG both carry the same information (earlier versions won't work with RWL files), so I'm not sure why one should work better than the other. Do you think you may have the programs set up differently? Different color space or something like that?

 

If you're converting to black-and-white, there are many ways to do it, and I'm no expert.

 

Your best bet might be to post the question in the post-processing forum, because there's a lot of knowledge and experience available there that may not be immediately available here.