The DP review on the Nikon D300 makes much of the camera's ability to correct chromatic aberration and produce sharper images by bringing the colour channels into better alignment in j.pegs: and in RAW but only provided the Nikon converter is used for processing. My habit has been to convert all my RAW images to dng files and then process in Adobe Camera Raw. Am I really losing accutance by doing this? If yes, does Adobe have any plans to update their converter so that it can make use of the appropriate Exif data?

Alan

AFAIK, there's no other source to coroborate DPR's view that CA related info is indeed written in the RAW file meta-data based on EXPEED processor analysis.

Much more probable (and sensible from a processing 'economy' point of view) is the hypothesis that Capture NX performs the same (or very similar) analysis and processing on the RAW files that Nikon's EXPEED engine does for the in-camera jpegs.

In fact, the Nikon converter has included this functionality for some time now. The new thing with the D3/D300/D60 cameras is only that Nikon has incorporated this functionality in their in-camera jpeg processor.

As far as the core of your question goes, it will be easy for you to download the trial of Capture NX and compare for yourself (and for your lenses) the efficiency of NX's auto colour aberration control vs. ACR controls.

Alan, it is not very wise to convert all your files to DNG today. There are more advantages with keeping your NEF files, as you can only get certain image quality advantages with Nikon NX. You might need that in the future. Converting to DNG will narrow your choice of RAW software to 3rd party only, where keeping the original NEF will gain you all the available software.

As for CA, it is not a question of EXIF. Nikon has developed an algorithm to find the correct amount of CA offset where adobe rely on the user to set the offset accordingly. If adobe will provide an automatic CA algorithm you might have the same affect, if adobe do this better or the same as Nikon.

Slightly off topic: I know only one reasonable ground to convert NEF files in DNG: the file size. However, the D300 and the D3 can record in *compressed, non-lossy* format as well (as opposed to the former models, the compression of which was always lossy).

Thank you all for your helpful responses.

I wonder if chromatic aberration that is not visible really is a problem. Certainly I get colour fringing perhaps 2 pixels thick on edges visible at ultra high magnification and obvious pixellation but certainly not visible in normal use. Is this still sufficient to degrade ultimate accutance?

It depends a lot on the final print size and viewing distance. In many cases you may be surprised that the fringing isn't visible in the print.