PC to handle D800 file info needed please (2 Viewers)

[fender]

Hello all,
I am thinking of buying a Nikon D800 but have read that a pc upgrade may be required to handle the 36mp files.
My present pc is running on windows XP with an 80 gig hard drive. I have two external hard drives, an 80 gig and a 1000 gig.
I don't have a large budget available to upgrade so would welcome any advice as to my best and cheapest option please.

Regards,

Phil

 

[kitefarrago]

You're telling us how much memory your PC has for storing images. This is not a big deal because you can always store data on external hard drives.

What is rather more important is how much `work memory' your machine has. I certainly noticed the difference between working with 12MP and 24MP images. I'm not a Windows user so I don't know how you find out about that - there must be some kind of `about your PC' menu item which will tell you.

Andrea

 

[fender]

Hi Andrea,
Thanks for your response. Sorry not to have given the right info.Hope the details below are more helpful.

Dell Optiplex GX 620. Windows XP Professional. Version 2002. Service pack 3.
Intel Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz. 2.99GHz. 0.99GB of RAM

Regards,

Phil.

 

[njlarsen]

WinXP will soon stop to be supported by windows. You could choose a couple of option, like purchasing a completely new system, but it would probably suffice to upgrade to Win7 and add a whole lot more on board memory 4gb minimum and preferably a lot more where your system currently reports <1.

Cheaper would be to use some version of unix, but other people would have to advice you in that direction.

Niels

 

[kitefarrago]

I'm not a Windows user and so I can't really comment on the options regarding updating the operating system. However, I agree that with that machine you have no realistic chance of dealing with the file sizes of a 36MP camera.

Which software do you intend to use for photo-editing? If it's something you already have, can it deal with these file sizes? If you intend to use whatever comes with the camera, will it run on your version of Windows?

My current machine has 8Gig and if I have lots of tabs open in Firefox it does struggle a bit with files from a 24MP camera, and even if Lightroom is the only serious piece of software running, changes aren't instantaneous as they were with 12MP files.

So at a minimum you'll have to increase the memory you have (although getting something that has a faster clock speed if possible wouldn't hurt either), but you may also have to look at updating the operating system.

Andrea

 

[Andrew Rowlands]

I'd seriously suggest moving up to a more modern PC or you are likely to be very disappointed. That (10 year old?) PC isn't going to cope well with any modern software that you'll need to use to make the best of your photographs.

If you're happy to stay with Dell, their Home and Small Office section still has some decent Windows 7 (can be tweaked to look/act much like XP) computers, even the base model tower (~£460) will be 3x more powerful than the current one. I'd add a £30 graphics card to that to boost common Photoshop type tasks even further.

What screen do you have, size, resolution?

 

[fender]

I'm not a Windows user and so I can't really comment on the options regarding updating the operating system. However, I agree that with that machine you have no realistic chance of dealing with the file sizes of a 36MP camera.

Which software do you intend to use for photo-editing? If it's something you already have, can it deal with these file sizes? If you intend to use whatever comes with the camera, will it run on your version of Windows?

My current machine has 8Gig and if I have lots of tabs open in Firefox it does struggle a bit with files from a 24MP camera, and even if Lightroom is the only serious piece of software running, changes aren't instantaneous as they were with 12MP files.

So at a minimum you'll have to increase the memory you have (although getting something that has a faster clock speed if possible wouldn't hurt either), but you may also have to look at updating the operating system.

Andrea

Hi again Andrea, I use Lightroom 3 for my main editing(hopefully it will be able to deal with the file sizes!)...i first upload the raw photo's via a cardreader to Picasa 3, then move them to my external hard drive to store until i open them in Lightroom,then once edited, export them back to Picasa as jpegs. I had intended to use this process when i do get the D800,rather than use what comes with the camera.I am currently using a Nikon D300 12 mp camera and i must say that these size files are from instantaneous to import/export to and from Lightroom...but guess this could be due to my current pc? Regards, Phil.

WinXP will soon stop to be supported by windows. You could choose a couple of option, like purchasing a completely new system, but it would probably suffice to upgrade to Win7 and add a whole lot more on board memory 4gb minimum and preferably a lot more where your system currently reports <1.

Cheaper would be to use some version of unix, but other people would have to advice you in that direction.

Niels

Hi Niels, Thanks for your input.I didn't realize that windows were soon to stop supporting windows XP,so looks like i would have had to upgrade soon anyway then!

Regards, Phil.

I'd seriously suggest moving up to a more modern PC or you are likely to be very disappointed. That (10 year old?) PC isn't going to cope well with any modern software that you'll need to use to make the best of your photographs.

If you're happy to stay with Dell, their Home and Small Office section still has some decent Windows 7 (can be tweaked to look/act much like XP) computers, even the base model tower (~£460) will be 3x more powerful than the current one. I'd add a £30 graphics card to that to boost common Photoshop type tasks even further.

What screen do you have, size, resolution?

Hi Andrew, Thanks for your input and suggestions. Actually i bought this pc reconditioned in late August 2011.

My screen is a 19" widescreen LED Benq G920 WL and has a DVI_D socket for digital(not connected via that though as my current pc is not compatible) Resolution is 1440x900 Pixels.

I don't mind changing from Dell if there are better options for my requirements.

Regards, Phil.

 

[kitefarrago]

Andrew is your man for the hardware bit. Your existing architecture is quite old, and I have some doubts whether it's possible to add the required amount of memory to it.

However, you won't be able to edit raw files from a Nikon D800 with Lightroom 3. This is how Adobe `forces' its users to upgrade to a new version: They buy a new camera, this requires a newish version of Adobe Camera Raw, and that will only work with a newish version of Lightroom. You can see a
a table of which camera works with which version by following the given link.

There are work-arounds: You can download (for free) a fairly new version of a raw converter, which will take your raw files and convert them into Adobes DNG format (which is still a raw format), which you can then open in Lightroom. This does add an extra step to the post-processing workflow (and will take some time with your big images). I did that for a while when I didn't want to upgrade my (then) version of Photoshop, although thankfully the price of Lightroom has come down significantly so upgrading that isn't quite so expensive. Also, I'm not completely convinced that converting into dng is the same as having the original raw file to work with (certainly for the less mainstream makes such as Sony or Olympus it is well known that camera raw isn't as reliably good as for Canon or Nikon).

You can see, moving to a new camera can have a significant impact on the tools required for post-processing!

Andrea

 

[fender]

Thanks again for the information Andrea,very helpful. It looks like a decision to buy the D800 will involve substantial extra costs! I will have to take time and consider my best options now.

Regards,

Phil.