Nikon's photo encryption reported broken

[whatthe]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5...=zdfd.newsfeed

[Tedob1]

i think nikon is f@#$%ed for encrypting these photos to begin with. if i take photos they should be mine to save in any format that i chose. to have to BUY their software if bull shite if you've already bought their camera.

good for him! he's not a hacker, he's a saviour.

im currently looking for a new camera. it will NOT be a nikon!

[phishphreek]

I agree that it is compete BS. You own the pictures... you should be able to do what you want with them.

But then again...

We're not talking about their low end cameras here. We're talking about their $2000-5000 cameras here. (Models DX2 and D2H) When it comes down to it... when you're spending that kind of money... what is $100? A lot of them come bundeled with it... that is the "rebate".

You or I wouldn't use this camera or software... but I'm sure many professionals would.

Besides... Nikon has their own plugins for photoshop. Adobe doesn't need to include one...

I think this is just Adobe's way of screwing with Nikon's reputation. Adobe is just pissed because they can't do what they want because of the DMCA... But wait a second... didn't Adobe just recently use the DMCA against a russian hacker who reverse engineered the Adobe portable document format encryption scheme?! Pot calling who what?

http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/poli...,45298,00.html

[oofki]

I didn't realise Nikon did that. I know they make some good cameras but if I ever decide to buy a Digital Camera, I'm definatly going to stay away from them. THATS EFFED UP!

[mohaughn]

These cameras have a very specific purpose, and that is for professional photographers. All they are trying to do is make sure that there is not any software involved that is going to screw up the raw image data that the camera produces. If people are using crappy software and that software does something to the raw images then that could hurt the reputation of these cameras. I don't see a problem with it at all.

It would almost be like saying that Akai or Giga samplers suck because they use their own proprietary format. It is that format that makes Akai samplers some of the best on the market.

Plus, I really don't think anybody here would be buying one of these cameras just for personnal use. Nikon makes awesome cameras, and if you buy their 500$ consumer brands you don't get this type of feature functionality anyways. It is always going to compress the image into a .jpg without the option of doing a raw write. That I can see the Nikon coolpix 5200 doesn't even support .nef format.

There is no standard on how to write raw photo images. So calling this encryption to keep other people from having fair use of the picture is a bogus claim in my book. Adobe is just mad that they can't support this format.

And like somebody else said, if you go into a high end camera shop and buy one of these cameras they will usually give you the software for free as an incentive to buy the camera.

[Tim_axe]

Wow. Nobody seems to understand what Nikon did, especially the writer of the article (who has a very misleading title). The photo is not encrypted. Just a one piece of meta-data.

------------------------------------------------------------

The story is actually Nikon Encrypts White Balance Value. And it is old news.

White balance...this is a number usually between 2700-14000 that represents the kelven temperature of a light source. Any decent RAW conversion program (such as the free RawShooter Essentials) can more accurately determine the correct value here than the camera can (especially since you get control over it).

The fact that this number was not avaliable at the time an image was captured (Nikon hiding it) doesn't prevent you from making a guess as to the correct value. Infact, even the camera guesses this number, and at times it is very far off from what the photographer "sees." This is why we shoot RAW -- to correct whitebalance in post process and not be stuck with what the camera gave us.


The story surfaced when Adobe was working on adding Nikon's new D2X to their RAW convertor. They couldn't read the whitebalance value, and complained. Suddenly the D2X is unsupported, all because what the camera guessed for the white-balance can't be read. And we get these run-away stories about how Nikon is killing the industry.


To be fair though, Nikon does need to be slapped by the industry for doing this. It doesn't really have any impact on the image -- everyone just guesses that value because there is no "correct" value for the whitebalance anyways. Adobe just can't implement it until they know Nikon won't sue them under the DMCA under it. And now they can probably sell it as a feature for Photoshop CS2 once they're allowed to do so...

[rcgreen]

When you take photos with film, you are not stuck having to take your film
to the camera manufacturer to get it developed. Some people need an ass-kicking.

[Tim_axe]

rcgreen - for the most part true, although many people did infact choose to do so in the late 1880's and that got a lot of people into photography. "The Kodak" comes to mind (then the Brownie)...wildly popular camera because of Kodak's work to meet their words "You press the button, we do the rest."

Maybe Nikon wanted to do the same thing in Digital?



But the story is still Nikon just obscuring the white-balance metadata, and Adobe trying to get everyone to adopt their new Universal RAW format, "*.DNG". But I sure hope Nikon and/or any other camera manufacturers don't get more crazy ideas to try and lock out the competition through the DMCA, etc...

[mohaughn]

If you want to get a roll of Kodak Advantix film developed you have to take it to a developing shop that has invested the money to buy the right kind of Kodak equipment to develop that film. So essentially you are taking it to Kodak.

[nihil]

I must admit I find this all very confusing.

1. How many of these cameras will Nikon sell? 250,000? and they won't get more than $50 out of the $100 which is 12.5 million dollars...............absolute chicken dung to an outfit like Nikon.

2. There are Nikon plugins to Photoshop?

3. Given that one photo technician can support several photographers there will be far fewer copies of photoshop sold than Nikons

4. Adobe sell software Nikon sell cameras and accessories..........they are not natural competitors

5. Product wise I would say that photoshop has a much stronger market position than Nikon cameras. So why should Adobe care? they should be more worried about all the pirate copies of their software around the globe, like sensible software companies are? They are not seriously going to make any more money by supporting two particular models of camera.

6. The use of both products is not mutually exclusive, and Nikon face far more competition than Adobe?

So, what to make of it all?

A. Nikon seem to have adopted a strategy intended to protect the reputation of their high end products. This is a little strange as one would expect the photographer to be the first one to look at the pictures and form an opinion. He is unlikely to use photoshop, as that is a technician's tool.

If the technician screws up loading the images or Adobe's product was crap, the publisher/editor will blame the photographer, the photographer will blame the technician and the technician will blame Adobe. So in a way Nikon are covering Adobe's a$$?

B. Adobe are behaving like petulant little schoolkids because they have been "denied" something. They should really grow up and concentrate on their core business specialities. This is peripheral, at best.

That is my view wearing my business analyst/accountant's hat (and don't as me if it is black or white )