A digital camera RAW file is not a picture, it should be nothing more nor less than the raw data as read from the CCD (possibly with some form of lossless compression) so it makes no sense comparing it to image formats =========== Which, in point of fact, is why most people recommend using it over any image format.
For a Pentax RAW file, it *IS* an image format. It's a TIFF. It's not an RGB TIFF like one may be used to seeing. If you were to load up the image, you'll see a monochrome image of the picture. The value of a monochrome pixels will be the luminance component of the image shot, weighted by the tranmissivity of the pigment in the particular sensor pixel.
Of course for the -DS it's a 12-bit TIFF which doesn't really exist. Very minor tweakings on the tiff file format.
-Cory -- ************************************************************************* * Cory Papenfuss * * Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student * * Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University * *************************************************************************
