[JJ_SO]

At first: We as photogs don't get RAW data out of the cam without a lot of overhead and (fortunately) also with some sort of compression. Here are the next types of purists yelling "I only shoot uncompressed!" I'm so tired of all this purists blurb… That's why "Only the original converter converts the best out of the original RAW" in my eyes is plain bullshit. I didn't buy lenses and bodies to stay as close as possible to the limits given by the manufacturer idea of what's useful. I did that because I want to get the kind of photographs I have in mind with as less loss as possible of information. And I think the reverse engineering of the RAW is also a kind of quality control for the RAW. I don't care if camera settings like picture control, vignetting or distortion are read out by the converter. Some of those failures don't disturb me, other settings I can do better in post process. I switch to JPG only when I focus adjust a new lens, otherwise i could have bought a point & shoot.

 

So the point "only the original raw converter…" is NOT valid because Nikon and Canon and the rest of them stayed away from developing photo chemicals with a reason and they only buy converter development manpower to protect their stuff a little bit.

 

The really good thing with Pentax was DNG out of the cam, so I was pretty free to use the RAW-converter with or without DAM what suited best to my at the time learnt skills (and the ones I had to learn). One can ask, if that's one of the reason why Pentax isn't giving any CaNikon manager grey hair. Their SilkyPix converter was garbage in terms of usability.

 

There are basically few types of sensors to consider: Some Fuji, some Foveon and hundreds of Bayer pattern. All those could be done within the DNG specs. Nobody does it. And the manufacturers do feed the phantasy of being better off with a genuine format. We photogs are pretty stupid...