DNG Support

[Anonymous]

G'day Folks, 

Has anybody found a way to work with DNG files nativley ? 

I am stitching images for aerial mapping, so I care about losing individual pixels. 

Cheers, 

Pete

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous,

may you explain why you think DNG format will increase the outcome of the your reconstruction? In my understanding the choice of jpeg vs dng will not affect the alignment, optimization, and geometry produced by the algorythm.  The higher bit depth of dng file format would only give a moderate advantage when building texture maps.

Acutally the debate on the use of raw (or dng) vs jpg in photogrammetry is a very interesting topic, i would pleased to hear your opinion about this.

Cheers,

V.

[Anonymous]

G'day V, 

Any questions that stimulate critical thinking are good ones 😉 

My issue is with JPEG and lossy compression. As far as I can tell, I don't have the option for lossless JPEG on my camera. 

I wanted to try RAW images to see if it makes much (any ?) difference in quality of the end product and DNG is the only output I can get from my camera that isn't compressed. 

I'm no photographer, mathematician and GIS expert; I'm figuring this out as I go along. 

Regards, 

Pete

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

usually for very accurate reconstruction, such as those in archaeology, people strongly advise to take pictures in RAW format and then converting them by using LR or similar. The reason why you do not want to use jpeg from the camera is that the camera itself could apply filters or distruptive corrections during the internal process of compression from the raw format to jpeg. Also, there could be a lot more to say on the actual amount of features used by the software in the process of reconstruction or alignment, and hence, if the difference of bit depth may really have an impact.

So i agree with the common practice, that is, shooting in raw format, storing the raw photos as reference and then exporting to jpeg (at the highest quality) and using jpeg for reconstruction.

There is so much to read out there, but after i read tons of discussions and papers, so far no body has ever drawn an exhaustive conclusion on this matter.

V.