# Sony raw files lossy compressed



## Drizzt321 (Feb 12, 2014)

Lloyd Chambers has an very interesting post up describing the Sony A7 & A7R & other Sony camera raw file format. Apparently it uses "11 + 7-bit *lossy* compression scheme". Lossy compression. Seriously Sony. You don't have "14-bit raw recording" when you use a lossy compression scheme.

http://diglloyd.com/blog/2014/20140212_2-SonyA7-RawDigger-posterization.html


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## neuroanatomist (Feb 13, 2014)

But...but...the a7R is the perfect camera. Everything a camera should be, and nothing it shouldn't. How can this possibly be?? :


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## ajfotofilmagem (Feb 13, 2014)

It's sad, but the truth is that Sony continues to treat their users in Alpha cameras as if they were all amateurs. I see that since Sony bought Minolta. 

The insistence on Memory Stick card, then abandon it. 
The insistence on flash shoe inverted, and then abandon it. 
The unwillingness to produce their own lenses. 
The authorized service poor. 
Technological novelties to play with the images. 
The difficulty of finding accessories in stock in stores. 

Who buys Canon or Nikon, is investing in a "system camera" 
but Sony does not take seriously this concept.


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## Drizzt321 (Feb 13, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> But...but...the a7R is the perfect camera. Everything a camera should be, and nothing it shouldn't. How can this possibly be?? :



Everything I've read about the A7R says, despite some of it's flaws, it's actually quite a good camera in a incredibly small package. I thought "awesome!"...until I heard this. Come on, it's not that hard. Lossless compression is easy. Just grab libz, gzip, lzo, or bzip2, stick it in the pipeline based on which works best for raw image, and make sure you have enough CPU for it and you're done.


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## Deleted member 91053 (Feb 13, 2014)

Pity I was looking at the A7/ A7R as a landscape camera. I thought one of these little beauties would lighten my load and give me better images (with my existing lenses). Ah well I will just have to struggle under the weight of my 1 series!


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## Dylan777 (Feb 13, 2014)

Drizzt321 said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > But...but...the a7R is the perfect camera. Everything a camera should be, and nothing it shouldn't. How can this possibly be?? :
> ...



O-no   

Should I return mine? ;D


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 13, 2014)

Interesting article. In reality, it will not matter to most people who use the camera, they are looking for a small sized body, and high MP. That's what they get. 

I'd not likely ever spot the issues referred to, they are barely visible, and then only to someone looking for them. I suspect Sony did it it to save money. Its the same raw system used on their other cameras, and creating something entirely new to them was probably beyond the budget, and you can be sure that Sony is very careful with budgets right now.


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## Ruined (Feb 25, 2014)

I agree most will never notice this.

But, I also agree that this is the sort of thing that will totally turn off some from ever using the camera professionally. So if Sony wants that market, next version of the camera needs to fix this.


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## EdB (Feb 26, 2014)

Ruined said:


> I agree most will never notice this.
> 
> But, I also agree that this is the sort of thing that will totally turn off some from ever using the camera professionally. So if Sony wants that market, next version of the camera needs to fix this.



I think the thing that turns most people off of Sony is their continuous changing of their lens mount. Sony needs to pick one and stick with it. And also developing mores lenses, two good ones is not enough. This camera could be an awesome landscape/astro camera but it needs native lenses.


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## drjlo (Feb 26, 2014)

Ruined said:


> I agree most will never notice this.
> 
> But, I also agree that this is the sort of thing that will totally turn off some from ever using the camera professionally. So if Sony wants that market, next version of the camera needs to fix this.



I don't think this RAW issue is ANYWHERE as large a roadblock to professional use as Sony's complete incompetence or unwillingness to develop a functioning pro-level speedlites and RF wireless transceiver system that can be reliably used at weddings, events, etc. The impact on photo's will be a million times more noticeable than any issues caused by the Sony RAW.


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## Marsu42 (Feb 26, 2014)

Ruined said:


> I agree most will never notice this.



Indeed, as seen in lossy av compression these are tuned for human perception, so only a computer analysis might show large differences. I've good experiences with the "much better than jpeg" lossy dng format of recent ACR/Lightroom versions, it cuts the file size significantly & still allows lossless wb changes.

I do agree this is a communication breakdown on Sony's side though, they should have gone ahead and put a positive spin on it rather than letting some techs dig it out. The question now is how much postprocessing leverage you really lose with this file size type, and you cannot see this from a chart.


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## Aglet (Feb 27, 2014)

lossy-compressed 14 bit raw files from my Nik's survive PP just fine, are Sony's any different?
36MP camera uncompressed raw file is just silly-big without compression


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## Drizzt321 (Feb 27, 2014)

Aglet said:


> lossy-compressed 14 bit raw files from my Nik's survive PP just fine, are Sony's any different?
> 36MP camera uncompressed raw file is just silly-big without compression



I'm not arguing _lossless_ compression. That's just common sense. It's the fact that the perception of a RAW image format is exactly what the image sensor recorded. I know it's not 100% exactly, as all of the camera makers have a bit of post-processing in the RAW recording pipeline, but my impression is it's very minimal. The Sony format explicitly removes data from what the image sensor records. RAW means, to the vast majority of people, "unprocessed what the sensor captured". 

The Sony format breaks that meaning. I'm not arguing that it matters in the vast majority of real-world photos, just that marketing could have easily put that in as an asterisk and at the bottom said something to the effect of "RAW format uses a high quality, lossy storage format to balance high quality & lower storage space". Instead, they just say "14-bit RAW". Which the format literally and figuratively is not 14-bit. 

As for saying 36MP raw images are just silly-big, well, that's why you got a 36MP camera, right? You want super-high resolution images. You want smaller file size? Have the camera store a smaller RAW file. Say mRAW or sRAW. You know. Lower resolution files.


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## Aglet (Feb 27, 2014)

Drizzt321 said:


> Aglet said:
> 
> 
> > lossy-compressed 14 bit raw files from my Nik's survive PP just fine, are Sony's any different?
> ...



My bad, I somehow skipped the link you provided where the a7's showing horribly obvious artefacting.
Wow, that's throwing out too much data in a way that can have obvious consequences!

BAD move there, Sony, very much limits the abilities of an otherwise game-changing camera.

Sony is a system I don't have at this time, but am considering the a6000 for its abilities/$. I hope they don't do a similar compressed raw format like that on it and hopefully they'll fix the a7 series with a firmware update.


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## tron (Mar 8, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> But...but...the a7R is the perfect camera. Everything a camera should be, and nothing it shouldn't. How can this possibly be?? :


I guess it is perfect minus the lossy compressed raw files  ... ooops and minus the light leaking issue   ... oooops did someone mentioned the shutter vibration issue?


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