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Understanding Compression of the Sony A7R II Uncompressed ARW Raw Format (Diglloyd).

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Diglloyd posted two new A7rII articles:
Understanding Compression of the Sony A7R II Uncompressed ARW Raw Format
and
Reader Question: Convert to DNG for Sony’s Space-Wasting 14-bit Uncompressed RAW Files?.

And here are two key insights he shares about the new A7rII uncompressed RAW format:

1) The Sony A7R II captures 14 bits per photosite. The Sony uncompressed raw format then stores these 14 bits in 16 bits, bloating the file by 14%. In other words, Sony wastes about 9MB per image for no value or purpose at all. So Sony users lose triply: wasted storage, degraded camera responsiveness, fewer shots before the camera buffer fills.

2) A lossless-compressed format can save far more than even the bit packing mentioned above. Nikon and Canon use Huffman encoding. But it might be that the CPU in the Sony cameras is not fast enough for Huffman encoding?

In short, we would all save space, time and have a faster camera if Sony could add lossless-compressed files and not use the 16bit format. Let’s hope Sony has this on their todo list for the next firmware update!

Sony A7rII store links to [shopcountry 41860].

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