[Biscuit761]

Now I have upgraded my camera (New D300 ) I have encountered a problem, basically it takes an absolute age to look through the files.

The Fine Large Jpegs are about 5meg a go, my normal method of working after uploading is to go through all the pictures using the windows picture viewer, delete any bad ones (and boy do they have to be bad for my finger to go near the "Delete" button), and then open up anything that I like in Photoshop for editing.

The JPegs are taking so long to open (it feels like anyway, probably only a couple of seconds) that looking through them is getting a bit of a chore - especially as I can not resist pressing that shutter.

Also with such a big card (8 gig) it is amazing how soon you can knock up a gig or 2's worth of files, especially if you shoot RAW.

My PC is an AMD Athlon based machine with a 1.15 ghz chip and 768 meg of RAM, graphics are controlled by an Nvidia GEForce MX420 card. I have a 40 gig internal hard drive with about 6g free and a 350 gig external hard drive, about 275g free but quickly filling up !

Suggestions on an upgrade would be helpful. Would a nice Imac solve my problems or is it just a case of a bit more RAM and perhaps a change of chip ?

Cheers

Bill

[imcarm]

Being a Macbook Pro user then I would have to say go for a mac with 2gb or 4gb of ram - The Imacs are wonderful beasts and as with all Macs they just work wonderfully and seem to made for photo editing

Although I'm sure a dual or quad core CPU with 2 or 4gb ram to replace your current set up would do the job just fine.

I pick up my D300 tomorrow afternoon so I'll let you know how well the Mac handles the files (I'm running 4gb ram). What lenses did you go for with your D200 btw?

[Biscuit761]

Thanks Imcarm, thinking of going the Imac route. Will my Maxtor disc drive plug into it ?

By the way its a D300 I have not D200 as your post (typo ?), have got the same glass as I used with my D50, Sigma 17 - 70 (may change for Nikon, feel it always gives a brown cast), Nikon 50mm 1.8 and Nikon 80 - 200 F2.8 D lens (not the new VR one) which is my favourite.

Bill

[Gow87]

Anything these days will be a very large improvement. Although Macs are fantastic beasties they do use mobile chips which means you essentially pay more for less, However You do get the shiny-est machine ever and they are built very very well.

Bare in mind you could get a pc quite a bit cheaper, you wouldnt need anything massively powerful.. but it does help

[Biscuit761]

Wondered what sort of machine the owners of the D3, 1D and 5D's and used, their image sizes are way up from mine.

Bill

[Antpink]

So not one of the camera's you mentioned, but a D80 with highest res jpeg is about 3-5 mb per pic. I have the same problem with deleting files, so storage is getting racked up pretty quick. Also have almost all the kids DVD's backed up so that the originals don't get wrecked by their ever so delicate handling, so this is running at around 100+gb of space. My pc is an AMD 3200X2, 3gb RAM, XP Pro and lots of software I run simultaneously. The biggest slow down is file transfer from the SD card, but otherwise plenty quick enough when the files are on the HDD.

Biggest problem I had was getting more storage crammed in to the case - now have 2x500gb (one is purely for file backup), 1x250gb and an external 250gb. Now I need another 500gb HDD! Had to upgrade the casework to hold all the current and future (room for 3 more) HDD, although I am toying with an external NAS instead.

Based upon my above config, just about any current Intel or AMD dual or quad core will be more than sufficient, but get at least 2gb RAM. Suggest to DIY your PC to only get what you need and spend money where it counts and not have all the unnecessary manufacturer installed crud (which only uses up your RAM bandwidth), use XP Pro not Vista (memory hog) and make sure you back up your files religiously! Problem with digital format is that it can so easily be irretrievably lost!

[booyaka]

Ram is the most important thing when it comes to shift pictures around etc.

I would consider a total overhaul personally.

At least 2gb but for the cost of 4gb of DDR2 ram in a pc is only about £60 now.

Any intel core2duo plus 2/4gb of ram will be a monster improvement over your current system

[imcarm]

Originally Posted by Biscuit761

Thanks Imcarm, thinking of going the Imac route. Will my Maxtor disc drive plug into it ?

By the way its a D300 I have not D200 as your post (typo ?), have got the same glass as I used with my D50, Sigma 17 - 70 (may change for Nikon, feel it always gives a brown cast), Nikon 50mm 1.8 and Nikon 80 - 200 F2.8 D lens (not the new VR one) which is my favourite.

Bill

Any USB/firewire drive should plug into it, I use a cheap unbranded external USB drive which works fine with the Macbook

It was a typo Bill, I did mean the D300 (sausage fingers)

I went with the Sigma 18-125mm f/3.5-5.6 DC to start me off, need to save some more thought as I need some faster glass, I know for certain the 70-300 VR, a nice wide angle and body grip will be my next purchase. This afternoon can't come quick enough.

[Strobe]

PC's are just so cheap, comparatively speaking, that I would just swap out the base unit for another. Dual or Quad core processor, at least 2 Gb RAM, and decent HDD - all pretty much standard spec these days. I have always built up my own PC's and upgraded as I went along but now it's just easier to buy a new PC. I have never used a Mac and did seriously consider moving over when my last laptop died (arguement with a bottle of bud ) but all the existing pc software I had meant I stayed with a PC. Try www.novatech.co.uk, they aren't the cheapest but are reasonably competitive and use good components.

[h4rri]

Yeah PC's are cheap to buy but then add on the software and all the hassle you have they simply aren't worth it. I used to spend hours on my PC just getting it stable enough to load up the shots. Now all the time I spend in front of my Mac is used editing not nursing the useless fat sack of crap PC into working for more than 45 minutes without crashing again.

[Liquid101]

Originally Posted by h4rri

Now all the time I spend in front of my Mac is used editing not nursing the useless fat sack of crap PC into working for more than 45 minutes without crashing again.

Praise the lord!

Completely agree - It's only when you make the move to Mac that you realise just what you've had to put up with when working under windows.

Windows PC may be cheaper and more easily upgradable, but with Mac you get quality hardware and an integrated operating system that is way ahead of anything Microsoft has to offer.

[springtide]

Originally Posted by h4rri

Yeah PC's are cheap to buy but then add on the software and all the hassle you have they simply aren't worth it. I used to spend hours on my PC just getting it stable enough to load up the shots. Now all the time I spend in front of my Mac is used editing not nursing the useless fat sack of crap PC into working for more than 45 minutes without crashing again.

I don't have any problems with my PC at all

I even run the hated Vista, have three users always logged in, run Lightroom, Photoshop, Sony Vegas, few games (GTR2, Saga Rally) and the usual office apps. In fact, my PC hasn't been rebooted since, hmmm..... about 2 months (I think) - it's been on 24/7 while I've been doing my online backups to Mozy (have almost 300GB backed up at the moment)

I must be very lucky I also seem pretty lucky at work - cos' that one 'just works' also

Best way to improve stability of a PC is to buy quality components if you build your own (rather than the cheapest), or if you buy from a vendor - get a good make (rather than the cheapest). You get what you pay for, so if you have poor quality hardware then your not exactly giving the OS and applications a great start.

Also with Windows, just install what you want to run, rather than anything you find on the internet. Also, if you run "cracked" software, then be prepared to get a little more than you hoped for. Seen so many people complain about their machine (which I've been asked to have a look at), only to find that they've downloaded a "keygen executable" etc for obvious reasons, which contains a whole host of 'other features' - viruses, spyware etc.

[soweezy]

I just bought a Dell Vostro 1700 laptop, only has a Celeron 2ghz, 256mb graphics card and 1gb memory but it's much faster than my old 1.5ghz celeron with 1.5gb ram and shared graphics
I chose Windows XP instead of Vista which probably helps too

cost me under £300 from Dell + £30 for a 2gb ram upgrade from Crucial

[tomson]

Another mac advocate here. Have a 24" imac at the mo and it glides through all my post processing with ease - quickly flicking through raw files (7-10 meg or so) is a joy!

[imcarm]

Originally Posted by tomson

Another mac advocate here. Have a 24" imac at the mo and it glides through all my post processing with ease - quickly flicking through raw files (7-10 meg or so) is a joy!

Good point there tomson, I forget just how well the mac handles raw files, I glide through them in Aperture at blistering speed as if they were jpg's

[h4rri]

Originally Posted by springtide

Also with Windows, just install what you want to run, rather than anything you find on the internet. Also, if you run "cracked" software, then be prepared to get a little more than you hoped for. Seen so many people complain about their machine (which I've been asked to have a look at), only to find that they've downloaded a "keygen executable" etc for obvious reasons, which contains a whole host of 'other features' - viruses, spyware etc.

Not always that simple though, when my Mac has an update the server tells me what it is and gives the option of installing it etc. The PC's would nag and nag until finally you relented and installed it.

I have a half dozen versions of winbloze [legitimate ] including Vista 'ultimate' and found then all resource hungry. I was running Shuttles so not cheap kit but they just sucked drive space and RAM like a hungry cheetah

The last time I reformatted my laptop it booted in under 30 seconds, load all the patches, updates [and patches for the updates ] it was taking over 5 minutes to be ready to work.

Never again will I run a PC LAN

[pixelpixel]

My 4 year old pc is working fine. It runs photoshop cs3 and is almost the same spec as yours.

I would get some more ram for your machine maybe max your ram out and stick a new graphics card in it. You could get this for cheap, if this don't work I would then sell it for a 'internet only user' and go for a new base unit IMO.

I did an a2 poster last night for my new house on my machine and finished with a 18mb tif I Had no issues with that.

One thing I would do today is dump windows image viewer, you can get better for free. Maybe even try adobe bridge. It maybe already installed.

I am amazed at the amount of people who give windows a bad name due to lack of control over it. Its the user that 9 out of 10 times is at fault. Not having ago at anyone but have a look at what your machine is going and then say do I need this running or that. After that you can say "well I tried to fix it but I do need a new one" to the other half

How many items do you have that auto start or how many items are running in the background ? I have seen some people run anti virus / firewall / spyware background scans all at the same time. Then they tried to encode a dvd

Good luck

[springtide]

Originally Posted by h4rri

Not always that simple though, when my Mac has an update the server tells me what it is and gives the option of installing it etc. The PC's would nag and nag until finally you relented and installed it.

I have a half dozen versions of winbloze [legitimate ] including Vista 'ultimate' and found then all resource hungry. I was running Shuttles so not cheap kit but they just sucked drive space and RAM like a hungry cheetah

The last time I reformatted my laptop it booted in under 30 seconds, load all the patches, updates [and patches for the updates ] it was taking over 5 minutes to be ready to work.

Never again will I run a PC LAN

I don't seem to have that issue.

Even my cheap Acer Laptop with Vista Home boots as quick as it did when I first got it, even through it's been auto updating itself without any interaction from myself. Only noticed last night that its now running SP1. Boots pretty quickly and only had 1GB RAM.

1GB of RAM is obviously not enough if you run PS or Lightroom, since it's these applications that consume the RAM 'like a hungry cheetah' (depending on what you are doing). Regularly see Lightroom taking 750MB and Photoshop doing the same, so if you want to run both these applications at the same time then you need 2GB of RAM minimum - and this is for the application requirements and not the OS.

My Desktop PC rips through my 18MB RAW files 'like they are Jpegs', but the main reason for this is that it has a similar hardware specification as what is in the new 24" iMac's. There is very little difference in the overhead of the OS on Vista and OSX. Vista does have a higher memory footprint, but when 4GB of RAM costs £60 it's not really an issue.

The only thing that Microsoft should have done with Vista is to stick to their guns on the hardware specification required to run it. Pressure from the big hardware manufactures forced Microsoft to lower the h/w specs for Vista. Apple wouldn't have done this, in fact they would have designed the software such that it wouldn't boot to force people to upgrade.

If Windows was that bad and crashed so often, why are there so many 'blue chip' companies running Windows environments? With the amount of quality Mac/Linux based applications available organisations could move to Mac/Linux pretty quickly if they wanted.

I'll happily run OSX, Vista or Linux. I see the OS is just a frontend to the applications I want to run and is not really that important. I find all stable enough for my needs, I see the application as the most important decision.

[Biscuit761]

Thanks for all the answers chaps, makes very interesting reading.

Will keep you updated.

Regards

[Farno]

Being as money is always tight or better spent I bought a Mac mini when my old PC died. You only get the mini, no monitor / keyboard or mouse but it meant i bought it new for £399 that is the 1.66 dualcore version. I bought 2GB of RAM for £30(the max for the mini) and have used lightroom and now after my RAM upgrade, Aperture.
The mini is easy to upgrade from stock with plenty 'how to's' on youtube, even the duo 1.8 goes straight in. My wife has a topspec Vista lappy that is gathering dust, we both love the mac and would recommend anyone get one. The good thing is the new ones with intel chips can dual boot either OSX or windows XP.
OSX is a long way ahead of anything Windows has and i was surprised how integrated everything is. As for working with pictures, I'm a long way off the standards I see on here, but my Mac is much faster at handling post processing and exporting files than my lappy (running a faster processor and more RAM)

[Biscuit761]

Developments - been out today to PC World, Currys, John Lewis and 3 Apple shops

Am falling for the 20" Imac with the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz processor and 2 gig of RAM, 320gig HDD, like the way it looks and goes, better half likes the tidy 1 box approach. Can I beat £949, the price it is in every shop I looked in ?

Also saw a range of PC's, top of the list was a quad core Intel PC with 4 gig of ram amd a 1 terrabyte HDD for about £700. Operated just as quick but was not as slick - feel that if I bought another PC I would always be thinking "what if".

Could still just buy a few sticks of RAM to chuckin mine I suppose.

Your thoughts please

Bill

[springtide]

Originally Posted by Biscuit761

Developments - been out today to PC World, Currys, John Lewis and 3 Apple shops

Am falling for the 20" Imac with the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz processor and 2 gig of RAM, 320gig HDD, like the way it looks and goes, better half likes the tidy 1 box approach. Can I beat £949, the price it is in every shop I looked in ?

Also saw a range of PC's, top of the list was a quad core Intel PC with 4 gig of ram amd a 1 terrabyte HDD for about £700. Operated just as quick but was not as slick - feel that if I bought another PC I would always be thinking "what if".

Could still just buy a few sticks of RAM to chuckin mine I suppose.

Your thoughts please

Bill

FYI - Think the 20" iMac has the crappy TN LCD display - which isn't suitable for photo editing - since it's actually only 6 bit colour
The 24" iMacs have a decent display, but obviously more expensive.

[pixelpixel]

Originally Posted by Biscuit761

Developments - been out today to PC World, Currys, John Lewis and 3 Apple shops

Am falling for the 20" Imac with the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz processor and 2 gig of RAM, 320gig HDD, like the way it looks and goes, better half likes the tidy 1 box approach. Can I beat £949, the price it is in every shop I looked in ?

Also saw a range of PC's, top of the list was a quad core Intel PC with 4 gig of ram amd a 1 terrabyte HDD for about £700. Operated just as quick but was not as slick - feel that if I bought another PC I would always be thinking "what if".

Could still just buy a few sticks of RAM to chuckin mine I suppose.

Your thoughts please

Bill

You could sit on the fence for as long as you want and never get to experience these things. Ask yourself do I want a new computer ? If so get the one that feels right for you.

Remember its fathers day tomorrow does that mean you can pick up your new system

[Biscuit761]

Not a Dad !, escaped that one and to old to start now !

Just been looking on line, Apple must keep a pretty tight rein on prices, only site which is significantly cheaper is from Spain - £591 + £25 delivery - waiting to see if there would be import duty to pay.

Bill

[springtide]

Originally Posted by Farno

..
As for working with pictures, I'm a long way off the standards I see on here, but my Mac is much faster at handling post processing and exporting files than my lappy (running a faster processor and more RAM)
..

FYI, processing photos is I/O intensive (as well as CPU) - so you can't really compare the performance of a Laptop and Desktop due to the difference of 'speeds' of the Hard Drives in this situation. Laptop drives are designed to be energy efficient since they need to be run from battery - desktops don't have this limitation. Cache on the hard drive (which is used to speed up performance of laptop drives) is not much use with I/O intensive applications.

If comparing, you need to compare 'like for like'. It's pretty much well known that the OS overhead between different OS's is now negligable since CPU performance has gone 'skyward'. This wasn't the case when we were running 800Mhz CPU's, but when we now have 4x 2.6Ghz Core processors the odd 100-400Mhz 'here and there' (if it exists) additional overhead is negligable. One of the biggest factors of applicaton performance nowadays, is which platform is the native platform for that application. i.e. if it's designed for Mac, and then ported to PC - it's likely Mac performance will be better. And vice-versa. With both PC and Mac being Intel (or should I say x86), this is now less of an issue today than it was when Mac was RISC based.

[Garf]

Originally Posted by Biscuit761

Developments - been out today to PC World, Currys, John Lewis and 3 Apple shops

Am falling for the 20" Imac with the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz processor and 2 gig of RAM, 320gig HDD, like the way it looks and goes, better half likes the tidy 1 box approach. Can I beat £949, the price it is in every shop I looked in ?

Also saw a range of PC's, top of the list was a quad core Intel PC with 4 gig of ram amd a 1 terrabyte HDD for about £700. Operated just as quick but was not as slick - feel that if I bought another PC I would always be thinking "what if".

Could still just buy a few sticks of RAM to chuckin mine I suppose.

Your thoughts please

Bill

Hi,

I got a 20 inch iMac a few months back and have been very happy with it - I got one from the Apple refurb store which saved about 150 quid off the price. I chucked another 2GB of RAM in it which cost £30 from crucial and it flies along.

As I say, it's the 20 inch which only has the 'crappy' screen, but given I'm not a professional photographer, and only do this as a hobby, it suits my needs. I guess whether it is suitable for you depends on how serious your photography is.

As you say, the one box approach is appealing, and my desk is far less cluttered since getting the Mac.

[Biscuit761]

Have just been looking at memory - 2gig RAM upgrade for £46 (got to buy decent stuff as my ASUS motherboard will not work with cheapo bits, a cheapo site told me that - said "not for use with ASUS motherboards" !!!

Took my card in with a few photo's on, the mac certainly handled them superbly and I quite like the iphoto software that comes with it, also like the fact that I can turn part of the HDD into a windows system and run my old software.

Decisions - I was going to buy the imac when I got in tonight - not so sure now.

Bill

[springtide]

Originally Posted by Garf

Hi,

As I say, it's the 20 inch which only has the 'crappy' screen, but given I'm not a professional photographer, and only do this as a hobby, it suits my needs. I guess whether it is suitable for you depends on how serious your photography is.

The issue is that you physically can't dispaly all of the colours. So instead of 256 shades of each colour, you are limited to 64 which isn't ideal if you want to print your photos and expect them to come back from the lab the same colour and lightness as whats on your screen.

It's not related to being a pro or not, it's about buying the correct tools for the job - and if the main task of the computer is to edit photos....

[Luffy]

I've just built my self a new PC and was amazed at how easy it was took about four hours and that included reading all the bumph that came with the motherboard etc.
I wasn't after anything blisteringly fast so I just put a intel E2180 processor in it, but I did want to leave room to upgrade in the future so the motherboard will accept quad core when the prices drop to a sensible level.

I can't see me ever buying a ready built desktop again. It has none of the unwanted software that manufactures seem to find it necessary to install and it runs a treat with Vista Home Premium 64 bit. and runs all the image and video editing software I have with out a problem.

[stebbo2]

Another Mac vote from me. I have a Mac Pro that I use for image editing. It absolutely flies, and doesn't grind at all (except fot the latest QT update playing havoc with iTunes )

I have friend has just bought the base iMac, and we are upgrading the ram ourselves (it's MUCH cheaper that way). I would recommend one of those to be honest, unless you want portability.

I do have a Vista Notebook - I don't use it for imaging at all, due to the inconvenience of having two libraries. I would if I had a Macbook though, as sharing is better Mac to Mac.

If buying from Apple, sign up to Quidco and get 4% back.