DNG is an overall waste of time. This was Adobe's effort to try to take over the market. It failed, mostly because Adobe was forced by the market to provide support for 'native format' RAW files from all the relevant camera manufacturers.

The idea that a DNG is smaller is true only until the Adobe software begins to write their edit instructions into the DNG. Then, these files will tend to get larger.

How does a DNG get smaller than the RAW? By Adobe striping the camera EXIF from the RAW and replacing with Adobe's own EXIF, a mixture of original data, the removal of some of the original camera data, and then Adobe's start-point for their Adobe-specific EXIF.

When you let Adobe remove camera EXIF, you tend to lose the ability to analyze the technical details of the AF configuration using the native camera software. This is especially true if you convert to DNG and discard the original RAW.

The fact that Adobe must support the original (aka native) RAW format, as well as all the players in the digital editor market, pretty much confirms the DNG conversion is a waste of time. The camera manufacturers flatly rejected the idea of outputting DNG from their cameras instead of RAW sensor data. Adobe is big, but not big enough to tell / force the digital camera industry what to do with their cameras.

If you convert to DNG and discard the RAW, well now you're locked-into Adobe and / or software that fully supports the DNG, pretty much only Adobe. That's what Adobe really wants....

So if I am interpreting all of the above accurately, In camera Leica created DNG files are full RAW images, that should not be converted into Adobe DNG files when imported into LR? That all of the raw data remains with Leica created DNG files, however, any native Leica DNG files that are converted, lose some of the finer attributes of raw files?

I only shoot NEF, (just added Leica Q3 to my array) and I never convert my NEFs, only save as JPEGs for web use. Trying to figure out this DNG thing.

Thank you
RL