According to what Adobe says at the link that you have included, Lightroom Classic will not support photos and videos captured in the HEIF format unless they were shot with iOS devices. I saw nothing about HEIF photos and videos shot with any Canon cameras:
Ah, yes, I see that. Full disclosure although I pay $10/month to the Adobe empire for PhotoShop and assorted other photo software, I am not a huge fan, and what you have found there is one such reason. A responsible company, seeing the #1 digital camera company adopting a new format for its flagship bodies would work tirelessly at supporting this format, since one can infer that it is mainly professional photographers who have access to these cameras. Why you would support folks using cell phones (yes, I know, some forms of pro imagery use them too) but snub people spending north of $6,000 on the camera alone is baffling to me. I use ON-1 Photo RAW for my RAW and JPG general photo sorting, editing and converting (RAW to JPG), the documentation for ON-1 Photo RAW 2022.1 (December 2021) adds the R3, with only a proviso that the sRAW and mRAW file formats are not fully supported (no access to the "tier 1" engine). In the supported formatted it lists "Apple HEIC" but this does not tell me whether this means "HEIC files as defined by Apple" or "Only HEIC files produced by Apple devices", and I do not have a Canon body that does HEIC so I can't check this feature.
Like you, I too have Adobe's $10/month photographers' package. I fought the subscription model for a long time, until they made it impossible to use their standalone software with the latest computer operating systems. While there may well be other, better editing software out there, I do not have the time or desire to learn how to use it. I can't keep up with everything I do as it is. I will be covering CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) next week. Before I leave on Sunday I still need to finish this week's column, setup and learn how to use my new EOS R3, write next week's column, pack and do a bunch of other stuff — including eating and sleeping. The fun never ends...
I still clearly remember when the only competing formats were 8-tracks and cassettes for audio, and VHS and Beta for video. File formats have taken things to a new, nearly incomprehensible level for most people.
Yes, agreed. For our use as photographers one has to admit that JPEG has been a strong standard and remains relavant for 80% of image consumption. The pity is that JPEG 2000 that was meant to address among other things the need for something better than 8 bits per color channel never caught on. Was it simply too far ahead of its time (digital cameras in 2000 were seldom much better than 8 bits)? If there is consensus that Apple's HEIC - HEIF is the way to go, how long will it take to sort out filename extensions and other minutiae to make it a truly universal standard used across all operating systems, photo software, browsers, etc..?
I don't see either of those lenses on Craig's roadmap. Am I missing something?
I definitely recall mentions of the 70-135 f:2, I too would have loved that as a replacement for heavy primes (85, 100, 135) and more versatile in a context of e.g. live music locales. I have since given up (for now) on expensive IBIS cameras and got the 70-200 f:4 lens for compactness and light weight and IS.
No, you're not missing anything. The RF 14-28mm F2 is just a rumored lense and not on Craigs roadmap. Since Canon execs stated after the release of the 28-70mm F2 that they are considering/ planning more F2 zoom lenses and there are patents for it, I figured it might be about time now. The release of the first f2 zoom dates back over three years and would be great to see another one.
The reason is simple, HEIC/HEIF is owned by Apple, naturally Apple wants THEIR files editable in Photoshop.. The fact that Canon put it in their cameras is just them falling for Apple's trick in trying to get HEIF to be the mainstream replacement for JPG. Probably because some genius decided hey, imagine if we could charge licensing fees for every JPG on earth by replacing JPG with our own made up format!! Wow!! We're gonna be rich!
I take photos in raw format only. I wish DXO PhotoLab would have the option to export files in HEIC/HEIF format as I am tired of exporting, storing and sharing jpg files as they are lower quality and take up more storage than the HEIC/HEIF files would. As sensor resolutions increase through the roof, and the ease of digital photography helps create tens to hundreds of thousands of photos for me, it is more urgent than ever for *any* file format to replace jpg files in the future.
You can already do that using JPG2000. BTW, show me a comparison where HEIF actually looks better than JPG and is still lower weight. I haven't seen one. For all the claims about formats like WEBP and HEIF they actually seem to be worse than JPG. It's probably shocking to people who don't understand what a bunch of scammers these silicon valley types are.
There is a reason why a standard is adopted, or not. JPG prevailed because the industry converged on a single 8-bit format, with variable compression, and more than enough for the sensors, screens and most printing systems. JPEG2000 suffered from excessive customization possibilities, 1 to 39 bits per channel, different color encodings, and to the best of my knowledge camera manufacturers never got together to standardize to a specific set of specifications such that any application can read all JPG2000 files from any origin, the way they can with JPG.
Actually, the standards that tend to get the widest adoption are the ones that have no royalty attached and don't have multiple players trying to extort money out of anybody they can. JPEG had its trials with patent claims, but they came late in the game and were all shot down. Most of the stuff out of the MPEG committee has been very problematic with respect to patent claims and the MPEG video standard only took off after a central licensing administrator was set up to standardize the process. HEIC definitely has a license requirement because you have to activate it to make Canon DPP read the files (not to mention that some AV software sees it as a root kit). Another alternative that may well win the game is JPEG XL https://jpeg.org/jpegxl/index.html . It has similar efficiency to HEIC along with some other neat tricks and also lossless compression mode that many would find interesting.
I worked for 4 years in an industry consortium developing data standards for oil & gas data, our standards had no licensing or royalty fees but they did have a license to which companies that used them had to subscribe, essentially committing to certain terms and conditions when using the intellectual property, but the consortium never solicited any payments. A company building products that used the standards could of course charge for the licensing of their software.
