Lastly, I'm not sure why Apple chose to go with RAW (not raw), because that's how them n00bs spell it out. Raw is not an abbreviation.
On the other hand, there is a definition for what constitutes scene-referred data.
ProRAW is scene-referred AFAIC. Un-demosaiced CMOS data is useless, and I am not holding my breath for any breakthroughs in demosaicing algorithms. As TFA stated, control over hardware gives Apple the opportunity to handle this stage better than what we are used to in the decoupled camera manufacturers vs. post-processing software developers world.
Unless there is more loss happening in addition to demosaicing, I am inclined to say this is on balance good stuff and good tidings for DNG format, although I wish Apple called it for what it is (i.e., DNG, not ProRAW).
That's why I didn't mention "raw format", only raw. :)
> Sony’s “raw” .arw files that in fact come lossy from some cameras
Yeah, had one of those. First gen ⍺7. To me raw denotes that data has not been demosaiced. But, as you note, mosaiced data can also be cooked and lossy compressed.
I'm not saying ProRAW (i.e. multi exposure linear DNG) is a bad thing. In fact, I've been waiting for something like this for years. The output from my Pixel cameras with their computational features like Night Sight has floored me. But still, there's almost no editing headroom in these overly contrasty JPEGs. The future is merged!
That does happen but I don't agree that it's "primarily" used that way. Canon and Nikon are still dominant and still use it to refer to uncompressed raw images.
I was not at all expecting raw capture to mean something else here compared to DSLR world, so I guess my disappointment shows.
Everyone spells it with all caps. Browse DPReview for a bit. "RAW" is just the convention, even though it makes no sense.
Early digital cameras still had RAW files, if anything they were more important since the onboard chips for synthesizing JPGs weren't very powerful.
At the time, portable storage like Compact Flash or Sony Memory Stick was often formated in good ol' FAT32, so 8.3 file names using only capital letters was a longstanding convention.
They were .RAW files, not .raw, in other words, and frequently enough, still are.