It's not clear if you are shooting PEF and converting to DNG or shooting DNG directly. In any case if your using Windows I would suggest you shoot some PEF's and use UFRaw, a graphic interface version of Dave Coffin's DCRaw, as a test. UFRaw is free and can be downloaded from Sourceforge.net (
UFRaw - Home ).
I shoot PEF but use ImageIngester to download and it converts my PEF's to DNG via Adobe's DNG Converter. I generally use the DNGs as my work files and keep the PEFs as the archive.
I use Lightzone 3.0 as my primary editor and normally find no difference in LZ's default conversion of the PEF vs the DNG. However, the have been instances where I did not get the image I was looking for even with post conversion edits. Here, I found UFRaw to be the answer.
Dave Coffin's DCraw is widely acknowledged as one the the best raw conversion programs and it can handle virtualy every Raw format out there. However, prior to UFRaw it was a Windows command line program (think DOS on 1980's x86PC). Dave deserves kudos for the work he as done and ( Udi Fuchs
Udi Fuchs Photography homepage ) for the GUI version. WELL DONE GUYS!!!