Sony Alpha ILCE-6000 raw compatibility

Sorry, Apple does not release this kind of information in advance. And we are not supposed to speculate in these user-to-user forums.

My Sony Alpha a77MKII still has no RAW compatibility either! Could be Sony dragging its feet or some complication ~ LR5 already supports both cameras RAWS which is very annoying as I do not want to switch!

Hi all,

the situation is very unsatisfactory ... even you know some more details:

1) with the OSX 10.9.3 update Aperture can read RAWs from the Alpha 6000 (as well the Alpha 5000), but the result is an overexposed picture (see e.g. http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/53734631).

2) other commercial tools like LR 5.4 support the camera (since ~ April this year).

3) even the free raw converters can handle the Alpha 6000 raw.

If one digs deeper into this:

a) you will discover that the input plug-in file in the 10.9.3 apple camera raw update is accidentally for a different camera model ... there are included correction tables for ISO steps that the 6000er is not capable (50,64,80,100,... the alpha 6000 starts at 100), this explains somehow the overexposure.

b) for the free tools the community uses the input plug-in files which are foreseen for the NEX-5N ...

c) ... because they discovered that the commercial tools are doing the same. If you compare the plug-in files in Lightroom designated for the alpha 6000 you will see the same content in the files for the NEX-5N

So it would be easy to patch this really quickly ...

Please Apple awake !!!

Best regards,
Frank

Hi, Do you think the same would stand for my a77MKII?

Hi Adder79,

not quite the same ... unfortunately the a77MKII is even not include with a wrong input plug-in. If you have a look into following directory on your mac:

/System/Library/CoreServices/RawCameraSupport.bundle/Contents/Resources/Plugins. zip

You will find some: arw.sony.xzy.cam

Where xyz represents a camera code which is specific to SONY. You can look up this number here:

http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/Sony.html

..

(contained in the Plugins.zip)

311 = ILCE-7R

312 = ILCE-6000

313 = ILCE-5000

(not contained)

317 = DSC-RX100M3

318 = ILCE-7S

319 = ILCA-77M2

So Aperture will not handle the cameras with the last three codes with the current raw camera support version (5.05)

best regards,

Frank

Hi,

I investigated a little amount of time to following tool:

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

With that I did try to outsmart Aperture. Aperture seems to lookup the "Maker" SonyModelID. Therefore I ran on a terminal for a given Alpha 6000 RAW:

exiftool -SonyModelID=NEX-5N DSC00307.ARW

That patched ARW file reads in to Aperture and the overexposure is gone. Unfortunately the geometry of RAW is in a 5N different compared to the 6000 (4912x3264 vs 6000x4000) which appears in Aperture with some crop.

Therefore I started a different approach and used the NEX-7 as SonyModelID. That gave a better result and also the overexposure is gone. I did not compare the colours in detail and I cannot say which SonyModelID fits better colour wise.

And of cause this is only a workaround. But it shows evidence that LR and others worked only with a little bit of luck ... and dare that they have the perfect input plug-in when using the NEX-5N one.

best regards,

Frank

Hi adder79,

you can have a try with patching SonyModelID as well. Nearest fit for the ILCA-77M2 is I guess the SLT-A77 / SLT-A77V ... maybe that helps you for a while.

Best regards,

Frank

I could not agree more! I have no wish to move to Adobe Creative Cloud but it is starting to look like I have no choice. I can open raw files with some sony software that I downloaded for my ILCA-77M2 but it is far from user friendly!

Many thanks but I am unsure how to do what it is you are recommending!

MCCHPS,

you are right there are not officially listed, but the needed files are present.

That makes me fear, that they oversee that all and in a next release (5.06) the mess is still there.

But unfortunately I did not find any channel (which is responsive) to communicate this. Even the recommendation to put it here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/aperture.html

... seems to be more like a "black hole"

Frank

Sorry I was a bit "close" with information:

Download the DMG for a Mac here:

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

The OS X package installs the ExifTool command-line application and libraries in /usr/bin. After installing, type "

exiftool

At least you should be familiar with a Mac terminal which you find in the launchpad, search for Terminal.

In this terminal: change to the directory where you raw is located (for a test copy one ARW to some directory) and than type in the terminal:

cd /Users/xxx/some_directory

exiftool -SonyModelID=SLT-A77 the_name_of_your.ARW

That will modify a single ARW file. It will make a copy as well. I do not know about the quality when importing afterwards, because there was a change in the camera in do not know how that reflects to this hack. It is just a workaround ... not more.

Best regards,

Frank

I will try and give it a go. I am sure the minute i subscribe to Adobe and get up to speed with LR5 apple will make the RAW updates..... #sodslaw