In camera lossless proprietary raw and wait for DNG v1.7 files with lossless JPEG XL compression to be supported in darktable, would be my advice.
Of course that is what they tell you. For me, personally, the point of a raw file is that I get unadulterated data from the camera sensor, as much as possible. So using a lossy compression format on a raw file just does not compute for me. I also donāt need the extra frames-per-second that this lossy format was developed to enable, so its pretty much useless to me.
Well Nikon licensed this compression technology from a 3rd party vendor, so there must be something special in it, I guess. It is patented up the yingyang, so it seems unlikely that itāll be supported by FOSS raw processors any time soon.
For me thatās easy: I use the format supported by the FOSS community, this gives me the most assurance now and into the future that Iāll be able to read and process my raw files.
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Well, it is not only Nikon telling, I have read many articles that seem to verify the claim. You maybe donāt need the speed. But there are types of photography where the speed matters. So in some situations I am willing to trade of maybe fraction of image quality versus speed because that gives me the shot.
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Even if darktable/libraw were to create an implementation of Nikonās high efficiency raw format, the chances of Nikon going out of their way to enforce patent protection are very low. Patent holders go after the money, not hobby source repositories.
the patent isnāt Nikons, they licensed the compression from another company.
Also, welcome.
In the past I have known of Nikon threatening an online poster of one of their repair manuals even though Nikon was unwilling to supply the repair manual or the $20 part to repair my Nikon because it was over 10 years old. This nasty experience put me off Nikon and I now look at a my Nikons as a ten year product and then probably no parts available.
I find it disappointing that any camera manufacturer will not freely supply the code required to process their captures in a userās software of choice. This would be a selling point to me when I buy a camera. If DT canāt process the images I donāt want the camera.
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Nikon probably wonāt, true, but IntoPIX very well might. They make money not just from licencing the encoder, but also the decoding SDK. And it seems that they insist their SDK must be used. If you want the situation to change, you should get in contact with IntoPIX.
https://www.nikoncafe.com/threads/nikon-he-he-nraw-support-as-of-31-march-2025.331229/
To be completely blunt, releasing an open source TICO raw decoder is exactly the kind of legal challenge that both patents and LLMs need.
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My simple answer to this is if DT or my program of choice can not process the image then the processing capabilities have changed and are more limited. I personally avoid compressed raw because not all software is capable of supporting it. I also wonder what is being loss to compress it, but that is just an academic rather than practical issue. Anyway memory cards are so cheap now compared to the early days of digital cameras.
I agree, that if your editor of choice doesnāt support it, then you canāt use it. And thus, I shoot the normal raw. However, if the support is there, and the processing capabilities donāt change, I will use it.
I donāt find it cheap, especially with the high memory pricesā¦ And it is not only the memory cards. I donāt know about you but have multiple backupsā¦ so it is 4 times (memory card, local disk, usb backup disk and cloud) and that adds up.
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Yes, calling their bluff by releasing a decoder is also an option.