[kp0c]

What an odd remark ...

Since four years, I edit my 36mp raws with a now six y.o. MacBook Pro and even at the time I purchased it, it was a hair cheaper than an equivalently built Dell or HP.

Taking resale value into account, a Mac is more value for the bang. Only problem, you won't get the stuff built to lowest standards. Just my two cents to oppose you. OT anyway

Resale value is such a good point and seldomely mentioned in the pc vs Mac debate. I sold my first MacBook for 3/5 the price I paid new, a little less than 3 years after purchase. A PC looses half its value, sometimes more, after 6 months and isn't worth much after a year, except for the very high end ones, which costs the same as a Mac anyway (and still don't have nearly the same resale value.) In the end, I'm not saying one is better than the other, but being overly pricy is not a valid argument against Mac imo.

[RobA_Oz]

36 megapixels might be a little to much for some older computers to handle. A friend of mine had to buy a new Apple after he purchased a higher megapixel DSLR camera. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

The old one must have been very old. My eight year-old MacBook Pro runs CS5 perfectly well with RAW files from my K-3, particularly after maxing out the RAM. I've also got two external monitors hanging off it (one via a USB-DVI converter). I'm not expecting any issues with files from the K-1. Hard drive storage is another matter, but even 2TB USB drives are starting to look cheap, now.

[noelpolar]

The issue with old Macs (Intel ones) mostly is your limited to USB2 and firewire..... and you got to know when to stop upgrading the OS........and SSDs wont run at faster SATA speeds (my SSD will only connect at 1... even though the hard drives connect at 2.... many hours lost on that one). Anyway Macs for me these days.... can swap a drive in about 15 minutes on a iMac these days.

[mee]

Let's not make this a Mac vs PC debate.. eventually someone is accused of being a nazi, a dust up ensues, and it really just goes no where anyone wants to go.


Back to the main topic, The biggest issue you'll want to consider is system memory (RAM). Today, it is pretty cheap and should be maxed out to whatever your motherboard can accept (usually anywhere between 8 and 32 Gigabytes). You don't NEED 32 Gigs of RAM but why not if you can swing it? I'd recommend a bare minimum of 8GB though. I'm using 16 GB currently and am eyeing another 16 GB.

That said, I've loaded 80+ MP (very large) panoramas in TIFF format made with my 16MP K-5 II on an i5 2500 with 8GB. A bit slow to switch together but it worked. Actually loading the final image was no probs though.

I doubt a 36MP image (even a RAW or TIFF image) is going to seriously be a bottleneck to productivity for most people. My i5 2500 is a 5 year old processor now. If you have an upper end PC from then or a mid range from now, you're likely fine. Just ensure you have enough RAM.

imo.

[bwDraco]

My laptop already struggles a bit with my standard RawTherapee workflow when dealing with several dozen 24MP Pentax K-3 II images.

What I do after each shoot is ingest the images, reject any obviously unusable images, apply a set of standard corrections from a profile to the DNGs, and make individual adjustments as needed. Once all the images are adjusted as appropriate, I process them in batch to generate the final JPEG images. After a sports event, I'll have anywhere from 20 to 100+ shots to deal with (30-60 per event is typical), and to process them all in batch can require a substantial amount of time. The noise reduction, in particular, is very, very hard on the CPU, which means that each image needs somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds to actually process. A substantial amount of memory is also needed to process each image—I'd recommend that you have at least 16 GB of memory. (My laptop has a Core i7-4800MQ [Haswell 4C/8T @ 2.7–3.5 GHz] and 24 GB of RAM.)

This is why pros use workstations with 8+ core Xeon processors and 64+ GB of memory...

[traderdrew]

Why do you think its some kind of limit to how many Mp they can handle? Its all a matter of patience. 36 Mp would just take 50% longer to load, process and store. I presume most people use at least 10x more time to evaluate, select the right tools and buttons, take a step back, think out the next step and so on. That makes the whole process at most 5% longer compared to a 24 Mp image.

All I remember hearing is his computer couldn't process the larger images but I did fail to mention that he shoots in and stores RAW files. A lot of wildlife people shoot in RAW. I shoot in RAW so much that I forget many people stick with jpeg.

[bwDraco]

A lot of wildlife people shoot in RAW.

I'm a sports photographer and I shoot RAW because it gives me far more latitude when performing noise reduction and exposure correction. Trust me, you need all the help you can get when you're shooting in a dimly-lit indoor arena. The buffer may be a lot shallower, but it's not exactly often that I fire more than even ten shots in one burst, let alone 23, before the buffer has a chance to clear.

(I actually do RAW+JPEG. The out-of-camera JPEG files are delivered to my employer immediately after the game for use on the website, which doesn't need the best possible image quality. I then post-process the RAWs and hand in the resulting JPEGs on a flash drive several days later so that they have better images to work with in more critical applications such as posters.)

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Last edited by bwDraco; 02-20-2016 at 09:07 PM.

[rawr]

I'm using 16 GB currently and am eyeing another 16 GB.

Do you know how much of that RAM is used? I always keep an eye on RAM usage using Task Manager or Resource Monitor. It's surprising what a small proportion of my RAM ever gets used, even at peak. Most of the 8GB in my 2nd Windows 10 PC sits there being empty, even if I load up a 3GB Lightroom catalogue with a many thousands of images and start doing work (exports etc). I could add more RAM, but it doesn't look like it would do anything in my PC. For me, CPU seems the bottleneck for most imaging tasks (like pano stitching in Lightroom or ICE), not RAM.

---------- Post added 2016-02-21 at 04:32 PM ----------

This is why pros use workstations with 8+ core Xeon processors and 64+ GB of memory...

Not always.

[mee]

Do you know how much of that RAM is used? I always keep an eye on RAM usage using Task Manager or Resource Monitor. It's surprising what a small proportion of my RAM ever gets used, even at peak. Most of the 8GB in my 2nd Windows 10 PC sits there being empty, even if I load up a 3GB Lightroom catalogue with a many thousands of images and start doing work (exports etc). I could add more RAM, but it doesn't look like it would do anything in my PC. For me, CPU seems the bottleneck for most imaging tasks (like pano stitching in Lightroom or ICE), not RAM.

When I had just 8 GB? All of it. Well, if using AutoStich64 to generate a pano or working a lot in PSE. Otherwise a bit more than half I'd say but of course the usage is quite dynamic. For instance, I have a large history/buffer in Photoshop that eats memory like crazy. That is because I have so many steps in the undo buffer I can cycle through. Take even a 16MP TIFF, load it into photoshop, do a few corrections and alterations to the image, load a few plugins on it, before you know your PC is eating HD space for more virtual mem (or in the worst case crashing to desktop or giving you the blank, black screen if nothing is left to grab). But memory is rather cheap these days.. 40 bucks for 8GB of DDR3.


Just FYI but Process Explorer (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer) gives a more thorough look at the memory in use. That is how I see what processes are really eating the mem vs what is reported to task manager.


As an aside, it is amazing how much memory a browser can use with multiple tabs open. Specifically, I'm currently running Palemoon (x64 build, based on Firefox) with around 7 tabs open. Running an about:memory and hitting the measure button nets this:

4,413.50 MB (100.0%) -- explicit
├──3,608.13 MB (81.75%) ── heap-unclassified
├────420.37 MB (09.52%) -- window-objects

That's over 4GB for a web browser session.

But Task Manager says its only using a bit over 2GB. Process Explorer shows a bit over 5 GB allocated! Crazy leaks. Thus why I close it (and Photoshop after saving state) from time to time to just free up the memory. Also good practice to close any other apps one doesn't have to be in while processing any large image files (or batches).

[jatrax]

Do you know how much of that RAM is used? I always keep an eye on RAM usage using Task Manager or Resource Monitor. It's surprising what a small proportion of my RAM ever gets used, even at peak. Most of the 8GB in my 2nd Windows 10 PC sits there being empty, even if I load up a 3GB Lightroom catalogue with a many thousands of images and start doing work (exports etc). I could add more RAM, but it doesn't look like it would do anything in my PC.

I ran 16gb in my machine since building it, but with LR 6 I have noticed it has been fully using all of that. I added an extra 16gb last month and it is using about half of that and sometimes all of it for short periods. I also run PS, and Firefox at the same though. It has made a noticeable difference in speed, my machine was slowing to a crawl on a regular basis.

[rawr]

Process Explorer

Yep, I use that too. All of Mark's utilities are good.

Sounds like your usage profile is different to mine. I don't use Photoshop, and the pano tools I use (Hugin, ICE, Lightroom) are pretty RAM friendly. I do use a SSD though, which helps handle some stuff that might normally go to HDD disk swap or RAM.

Web browsers are notorious RAM hogs. And getting worse all the time.

[RobA_Oz]

Let's not make this a Mac vs PC debate..

Well, I agree, but it wasn't even hinting at that (OK, one early comment), and I note that, Mac users having discussed the pros and cons of models and software, Windows users followed up with a similar discussion! All very civilised, as it should be. Not even a comment about cross-platform rivalry.

[Rai93]

I have 8 gigs in my laptop with built in graphics chip set, the monitor is cracked from when I fell asleep and dropped it(Not the first time or the last :P) so I'm currently running a HDMI into my 32" Vizio. So far I can run LR 6 pretty easily, it doesn't eat up a whole lot of memory but Exports/Imports are somewhat slow. I'm currently saving up for a new desktop that I've spent several months refining and will probably refine even more before it's done but you can build a decent photography oriented desktop for about $300-$500. Just make sure to get a decent GPU if you're running LR since version 6 can drop some of the CPU load onto the GPU and it'll speed LR up relatively quickly. 16 gigs is enough to run most graphics intensive games on high to ultra settings with a decent GPU so LR shouldn't draw more than 10-12 at a time on peak loads.

[Rorschach]

I would never buy a Mac for anything. Terrible quality/price ratio. Desktop computers I always build from components by myself. It is really easy to do. Top notch parts, fabulous quality for price.

[Rai93]

Do you know how much of that RAM is used? I always keep an eye on RAM usage using Task Manager or Resource Monitor. It's surprising what a small proportion of my RAM ever gets used, even at peak. Most of the 8GB in my 2nd Windows 10 PC sits there being empty, even if I load up a 3GB Lightroom catalogue with a many thousands of images and start doing work (exports etc). I could add more RAM, but it doesn't look like it would do anything in my PC. For me, CPU seems the bottleneck for most imaging tasks (like pano stitching in Lightroom or ICE), not RAM.

---------- Post added 2016-02-21 at 04:32 PM ----------



Not always.

Honestly as long as you have a good graphics card and CPU, 8 gigs is perfectly acceptable. Right now I'm running LR and it idles at around a 1 gig while the cpu and disk speed stay at 1% and 10% respectively. However when I modify images/import/export my cpu jumps to about 70-80% for 2-5 seconds and my disk speed jumps to about 50%. So all you really need is an i7 core or similar and an SSD. Obviously there's a little more to it than that but that's basic.

---------- Post added 02-21-16 at 02:02 AM ----------

There is *so* much you can do with your K-50. If you really want the K-1 next year, by all means go for it, but - personally - I'd recommend trying to squeeze everything out of the K-50 first. I've never owned one, but there are plenty on here that do, and it is rightly considered to be an excellent camera

I definitely plan to squeeze my K50 to death. I love this little beast, however as some posters have already mentioned and I've noticed myself the AF is really slow. I've also had problems with the exposure, shutter, and iso settings locking after a photo for a few seconds. However I do believe I made the right choice for my first DSLR and I will definitely keep it till it dies, but the K-3 and higher cameras look shiny so they just call my money out of my wallet and I don't even notice with my star struck eyes XD. Seriously though the fact that every single lens ever made for Pentax cameras are compatible with my camera is awesome and I'm super excited to test out some of the older lenses.