Strange problem with MacOS X and DNG/JPG

[thmk]

Hello,

I really do not know what went wrong, but it seems MacOS X 10.5.2 destroys the DNG files of my Ricoh GRDII. The attached picture gives an impression what happened to all of my files. Once I opened the folder on my hard drive in the Cover Flow view and I could see how the pictures suddenly changed. In the past when I was still working with an NTFS drive (using the Paragon NTFS driver) this also happened to jpg files from a Canon Digital Ixus 60 and I thought it might be related to a file system problem. But now this also happens with a hard disk formatted in the Macs native file format (journaled).
When using Lightzone for picture editing the thumbnails show up correctly but the preview is already damaged.
Did anyone ever encountered a similar problem? I would hate not being able to edit my photos on the Mac or have to be afraid that they are damaged by the system.
Btw... I have a Mac mini C2D 1.83 GHz.

Cheers
Thomas-Michael

[Eric T]

Thomas-Michael,
I don't see your camera on this list:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306835
That could be the problem. You may need to shoot jpegs until Apple gets around to providing support for RAW images from your camera. Send a note to Apple via their web site that you need such support. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Good luck!
Eric

[colyn]

Since Mac does not support all RAW files this may very well be your problem. As another poster pointed out your cameras RAW file is not listed in the support list..

[thmk]

Your mix of NTFS, and OS X in a work environment would seem to be the first question, why?


The mix is due to my PC/Windows past. All my old files were stored on an external hard disk formatted with NTFS. Furthermore I own a commercial Photoshop plugin for B&W conversion which only works under Windows and so I needed to keep a Windows compatible file format.


As far as I know the Raw files from a Ricoh GRDII should be converted in photoshop to DNG, unless Lightzone handles them directly.


The latest version of Lightzone does handle the DNG files for the Ricoh directly.


I just checked some of the files with Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Beta (Windows) and the files still look damaged. What I really do not understand is, how it is possible that the DNGs show up correctly for a short time and are then damaged. For me it looks like Mac OS X is simply killing my files by accessing them. I think this evening I will try the whole thing with my Olympus E-510 to see if this is a general behaviour or especially related to the Ricoh.

JPG shooting is out of question for me (bought the camera because of DNG support) and as mentioned, a similar problem also appeared with JPG files of the Canon Digital IXUS 60...

Cheers
Thomas-Michael

[thmk]

Hello,
first of all: I killed the Paragon NTFS driver and will not install it again in the foreseeable future.
Second: I found undamaged versions of my pictures on my internal hard disk and experimented with them... and nothing happened :-) I also took some new test pictures and gave them a run. Nothing happened again.
So currently it really seems that the NTFS driver went nuts.
Of course I will keep an eye on this issue and report back if it happens again.

Cheers
Thomas-Michael