Aglet said:
lossy-compressed 14 bit raw files from my Nik's survive PP just fine, are Sony's any different?
36MP camera uncompressed raw file is just silly-big without compression
I'm not arguing _lossless_ compression. That's just common sense. It's the fact that the perception of a RAW image format is exactly what the image sensor recorded. I know it's not 100% exactly, as all of the camera makers have a bit of post-processing in the RAW recording pipeline, but my impression is it's very minimal. The Sony format explicitly removes data from what the image sensor records. RAW means, to the vast majority of people, "unprocessed what the sensor captured".
The Sony format breaks that meaning. I'm not arguing that it matters in the vast majority of real-world photos, just that marketing could have easily put that in as an asterisk and at the bottom said something to the effect of "RAW format uses a high quality, lossy storage format to balance high quality & lower storage space". Instead, they just say "14-bit RAW". Which the format literally and figuratively is not 14-bit.
As for saying 36MP raw images are just silly-big, well, that's why you got a 36MP camera, right? You want super-high resolution images. You want smaller file size? Have the camera store a smaller RAW file. Say mRAW or sRAW. You know. Lower resolution files.