openRAW has launched the Act Now! campaign

[Scott Sherman]

There is a grass roots movement afoot. Photographers are trying to take back control of their images from large corporate manufacturers like Nikon and Canon. I thought this might be of interest to some who feel that their images are the property of the photographer and not of the manufacturer. Below is a pre-written letter which you can copy and send to Nikon with a link also given below, or if you have cameras of different manufactur and want to send it to them, you can. I don't think this is a negative thing as it is only a very respectfull request to the manufacturer to allow for open code access to all.

Below is an excerpt from the D1scussion forum. I believe that they want as many as possible to at least know of it's existance, so I took the liberty of copying it to this forum for those whom might also have an interest in participating. I did.

This affects basically every digital
photographer, if you shoot currently RAW (NEF in this case) or not.

The OpenRAW working group - which has it's origins in this list -
just started the Act Now! campaign. Michael Reichmann of
http://luminous-landscape.com/ and myself wrote an article called
"The RAW Flaw", which is available here:

http://luminous-landscape.com/essays/raw-flaw.shtml

or here:

http://www.openraw.org/actnow/

Please read it and check also our new FAQ:

http://www.openraw.org/faq/

You can help us, yourself and every other photographer on this planet
if you now write to Nikon and tell them what you think of their RAW
strategy (Note: This is not an Nikon issue, but this is a Nikon list).

To quote a list member from a private email:

Because photographer's images have a useful economic life span of
decades, and should have an indefinite historic life span, it is
imperative that long-term access to digital photographic RAW image
files be ensured.

So every help is very much appreciated!

http://www.openraw.org/actnow/#openletter

Thanks,

Juergen

 

[Gale]

Thanks Scott,

Can't agree more.

 

[Man-Fai Wong]

IMHO, it's a tough issue just like many others. There is no B&W here. A truly good solution won't be so cut-and-dry even though we always want *it* to be. It's not merely about ownership of or control over the images like some seem to assume or tend to force upon the discussions over in DPR forums.

Guess I'll go take another look over there when I find time. But me thinks, the practical goal should be to make sure the manufacturers know our concerns and then go from there rather than try to force their hands in some ways.

No time to go into it right now. Sorry if I'm being too vague in my comments.

_Man_