What format do you archive your photos in?

Until now I have automatically archived the original photo files from my S5600 thinking that whatever happens to any files I edit I can always go back to the originals. However, I am starting to think that this may not be the best thing to do. “Why?” I hear you cry.

My S5600 stores it’s RAW files in a proprietary Fuij format called RAF. This is fine at the moment while there are programs available to read and convert this format but what happens in 10 or 20 years time? Will anyone still care about RAF format, will there still be software around that will recognise it? Yes, I may still have the software CD that came with the camera but will I have a machine that will run it?

This is not just a problem for Fuji RAW files it affects any camera that stores data in a proprietary format, which at the moment is just about every camera manufacturer out there. Why do you think it takes time for all the editing software to have support for the latest camera models. In some cases they have to try and reverse engineer the files as some of the companies do not publish any format documentation.

So back to my problem and what to do about it. Ideally all the camera manufacturers would sign up to the OpenRAW initiative and use a common standard. However in the short-term this is as likely as hell freezing over and I need a solution for now. I have decided that the best solution is to convert all of my RAW files to TIFF and then I will archive both files. TIFF is fully documented and is much more likely to be supported by software for many years to come regardless of what happens in the world of RAW. I think this gives me the best chance of being able to use ALL my images in the years to come.