Import Sony RX-100 VA .arw files in Lightroom 6

In the following steps, I will show you how you can import your pictures from the amazing Sony RX-100 Mk 5a into Lightroom 6. This also works if you are having trouble importing your images from a Sony RX-100 Mk 6.

I am still using Lightroom 6, the last Lightroom before Adobe decided to switch to the very unfortunate subscription model for Lightroom as well. So far, Lightroom 6 still does everything that I need to do in my daily photography live. No need to upgrade to Lightroom Classic or Lightroom CC and pay over $100 per year.

After I got my Sony RX-100 VA (also known as RX 100 Mk 5a), I was super disappointed to find out that Lightroom 6 was not able to import the cameras RAW (*.arw) files. After I inserted my SD Card and hit the import button no new pictures where found on my SD Card. As noted on Adobe’s Cameras supported by Camera Raw site, the Sony DSC-RX100M5A is no longer supported for ‘Minimum Lightroom Perpetual version required’. I actually looked into upgrading to Lightroom Classic but that would have been too easy. My first attempt to import Sony’s RAW files was to use Adobe’s DNG Converter and convert all ARW files into DNG’s. While this worked fine, I am no big fan of file-conversions.

Instead, I found this great tool named ExifTool (by Phil Harvey) to modify the embedded EXIF data of the original .arw file. Checking above mentioned Adobe site one more time, we can see, that the Sony DSC-RX100M5 is still supported! Which is just half a generation back from the RX-100 M5a. All we are going to do next, is to modify the EXIF data of the .arw files and tell Lightroom, that the camera this picture was taken with was the RX100 Mk5, instead of RX100 Mk5a. Here’s how:

Download and install the ExifTool, which is available for Mac OS, Windows and Linux
Transfer your .arw files from your SD Card onto your machine, please DO NOT modify the original .arw files on your SD Card as they become unreadable for your Sony RX-100 VA
Run the following command using Terminal or the Command Line Prompt, replacing DIRECTORY with the path to your RAW files on you machine:
```
exiftool -sonymodelid="DSC-RX100M5" -ext ARW -r DIRECTORY
```
Now your files are ready to be imported into Lightroom 6.

This same trick works for the Sony RX100 M6 (or Sony RX-100 VI).

4 Comments

Fanny Leduc · July 1, 2019 at 2:44 am

Hi Joern,
Just upgraded from my old MkII to a Mk5a. Was so excited but now I ran into the same problem as you, with Lightroom 6 not recognising the file format. I ran the exif tool and that seemed to work (does the text need to say “Warning: [minor] Entries in SubIFD were out of sequence. Fixed. – C:/Users/Fanny/Desktop/RAWforEXIF/DSC07260.ARW”? If not I’m doing something wrong. If so, then Lightroom still gives me the error message that it can’t recognise the file… Any idea?

Joern · July 3, 2019 at 9:46 am

Hi Fanny,

Yes, the warning which you are getting is perfectly fine. When you are trying to import the fixed images, are you selecting the entire folder? Since this folder might contain both, the fixed ARW files as well as the original files. Maybe this is why you are still seeing the error message?

Please let me know if this helps, otherwise we can try some more troubleshooting.

Joern

Fanny Leduc · July 7, 2019 at 4:46 am

Hi Joern,
Thanks for getting back to me. I just tried it again, and Lightroom is only showing me the .ARW, not the .ARW_Original files. Just to be sure I deleted the original file from the folder.
But again Lightroom is saying “Preview unavailable for this file” and when I try to import it tells me “The files are not recognized by the raw format support in Lightroom (9)”

Joern · July 8, 2019 at 9:17 am

Just to make sure, did you install the latest Lightroom 6 update (which came out in December 2017)? You can find it here: https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/creative-cloud-previous-version-apps-download.html

The above workaround requires Lightroom 6.14.