Photoclubalpha

I am new to Sony having just changes from the Panaica (Panasonic/Leica) Digilux-3 for certain personal reasons.
I have bought a 350 with the Zeiss lens having spent 3/4 hour in the shop trying to decide whether to have this or the 700. In the end budget and a desire not to incur wrath of 'er indoors by overspending, made the choice.
I loaded the Sony software without reading that id is not compatible with 64 bit systems. As a consequence my Vista crashed and would not repair necessitationg a complete sytem reload whwich, as many will know, takes the best part of a day.
I note that Microsoft publishes codecs for 64 bit RAW to work withing the Windows environment but the Sony ones are only for cameras sold in the USA and Canada.
Does anyone know whether Sony has in mind to make the software available for 64 bit sytems in the near future?
I assume that PS3 handles Sony RAW, I've not been able to check due to the appalling weather we are having at present, so it is not really a problem. However, larger notes about the software limitations placed on the CD slipcase would be better if anyone at Sony reads these postings, please.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 indeed does handle Sony raw files. Or actually, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) does, which is a plug-in to Photoshop. And even though Photoshop itself is a 32-bit application, it will run smoothly on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.

In a fresh installation of Photoshop CS3, the ACR version will be 4.0 which does not yet handle most Sony raw files. Update ACR to the latest version (currently 4.5) which does. Also apply all the other updates which have appeared since CS3 originally came out.

By the way---did you hear the rumour that Photoshop CS4 is supposed to be right around the corner? According to what I saw elsewhere on the Internet, it will get released at Photokina. If that's true then most likely the next ACR version will be 5.0 rather than 4.6 ...

-- Olaf

Hi,

Have done all this with PS3.

Yes, I heard that PS4 is goping to be available very soon. A friend has the beta version and likes it, although I am presently unsure whether there is enough in it to justify the upgrade cost.