The danger's of upgrading to a new camera...

[Walczak Photo]

Alrighty...this is just a general FYI commentary. I'm sure there are a number of you folks out there who have already gone thru this, but for those who haven't and are thinking about getting into a higher end camera, here's a few words of wisdom that I've learned the hard way...

As some of you may know, I recently upgraded cameras. I had been shooting with digital point & shoot's and EVF's for a while, but as I'm trying to take my work to the next level (as in going "pro"), I decided it was time to jump into the DSLR's. After much personal debate...and changing my mind several times, I ended up with a Canon Rebel XT, Canon's 8.0 megapixel "entry level" DSLR.

Now before I say too much more, I have to say that the more I use this camera, the more I simply love it! Yes, there have been one or two issues...i.e. since I can't afford IS lenses, I have to have my tripod tethered to my left leg, etc.. (LOL!). Over-all though, anyone looking to step up to a DSLR really can't go wrong with this camera (unless you already have a nice collection of Nikon or Minolta lenses that is...). If you're like me and getting into DSLR's on the ground level...new lenses, new flashes, yadda, yadda, yadda, you'd be hard pressed to find a better value then the Canon Rebel's.

With that said, I've ran into one serious annoyance...my PC. Now as a former PC tech, I will admit that this issue had crossed my mind but in my desire to get the new camera, I sort of just "blocked it out" if you will. Before I bought my new Canon I had been using a Sony H1 (which I still have, still use and is still a great camera!) which is a 5.1 megapixel and an Olympus C-4000 4.0 mega pixel (also a great camera, but was sold to buy the new Canon). Before that, I had entered the digital photography revolution with a Poloriod PDC-700...a 1 megapixel camera now in my fathers posession. Now with all of these camera's I've never had any signifigant problems with image editing...and those who know me, know I tend to do -a lot- of image editing! LOL! I'm a very devoted Photoshop user and even with PS CS2, I've never had too many problems working on my images on my meager, home built AMD Duron 1600 system...until now.

What can I say...no one told me that upgrading the camera also means upgrading the ol' PC! LOL!!! I dunno...maybe this issue should be mentioned more often in the whole "JPEG vs. RAW" debate. Certainly working in RAW gives you many more options for finer control of your images that simply aren't available working in JPEG, but simply put working on 8.0 megapixel RAW images (which get converted to .PSD's for editing) on this Duron 1600 is like...well...watching dog poop ooozz thru molases! LOL!!! For example, I am currantly working on an image I shot earlier this week. I'm doing a great deal of color enhancment, two layers of sharpening and of course the usual adjustments to levels, saturation, etc.. Basically this image, as it is now, is up to no less then 8 layers in PS (not counting my signature!) and the file size of this .PSD has just peaked out at 203.01 megs! Yikes I say, Yikes! I just made another "tweak" to this image and hit "Save"....it's taking up to a minute -or more- to actually just save the file! The simple act of opening and closing files has become almost painful LOL!!! Then of course there's the filters...using the "lens blur" filter for example...hit "apply filter" and then go make a pot of coffee, have a few cigs, take up basket weaving... I've actually had to wait up to 15 minutes or more for that filter to apply...it's like waiting for video to render! Sitting here watching this thing process...I think I can actually feel my arteries hardening! LOL!!!! Not to mention, there's the issues with harddrive space. It's truly amazing, even when you're deleting "bad shots" right away, how fast 8.0 megapixel RAW images can fill up a 120 gig harddrive! I guess in a way this could be a good thing though; I've always been a bit of a packrat when it comes to images I shoot. Unless the image is really bad, I have a tendancy to try and save -everything-. And yes, I have desk drawers and shoe boxes full of pictures and negatives that I've shot over the last 20+ years. Hey...ya never know when someone's gonna come along and want to buy that squirrel shot I took two years ago or that shot of an F-15 I shot at an air show back in 1987 with my old Kodak 110! This way, I really have to pick and choose which shot's I'm actually going to keep. Either way, a 300 gig + backup harddrive has worked it's way into the budget...

Anyways, to cut this down to a nutshell, for anyone thinking about upgrading their digital camera's and especially if you're going from p&s's to a DSLR; don't forget about your PC. If you're using an older system and you do even a fair amount of image editing, you may be in for a more expensive "camera upgrade" then you had originally planned...for your own sanity's sake, please budget accordingly .


Alrighty, I think that file finally finished saving...back to work!
Bright Blessings & Gentle Breezes,
Jim

[bob_r]

Jim,

I feel your pain because I had similar issues. I had 2 drives in my system - a 100GB and a 50GB. But since I was a programmer in my former life, I have a lot of software. There simply wasn't room for all the photos I wanted to keep. Even though I copied a lot of them to DVD's, they were still taking up too much room. I finally bought a 250GB external drive and that has solved my problem (at least for now).

Bob R

[Bonish Photo]

I too feel your pain!! With almost a Terrabyte of storage space in my PC, and with it close to being filled up, the ol' storage issue is always a problem.

Lucky for all of us, storage issues are coming down in price quicker then the cameras are going up in image size. I was looking through receipts the other day and laughed outloud that I had bought a 256 Compact Flash card only five years ago for $175 dollars!!! I was standing at the check out counter of the grocery store the otehr day and saw 256 Compact Flash cards hanging by the gum of all places, for only $15. The 133x 2 gig cards I now carry only cost me $80!!

I back up my pictures onto a 500gig external hard drive and have another one that I keep at my brothers house that I copy everything to once a month, in case anything was to ever happen to my house or computer, and with the cost of External hard drives going down so fast, I'm looking at purchasing a 1 terrabyte mothership for the ultimate backup.

No one said photography was cheap. Upgrading is like anything else, it only opens up a whole new can of worms. With each new camera comes a new computer to process the pictures faster and more RAM to make it all flow nice. Everytime I have my computer guy build me a new one, he laughs saying this one will be impossible to crash, and only days later he goes crazy when I call him and say "It Crashed" Oh and by the way, I dont even use my RAW images, I work with my JPEGS unless I need really sell something, then I go to the RAW image.

Pat
http://www.everymilesamemory.com

[hw771230]

Pain, yes, I'm with you. I am running CS2 on a 5 year old dell laptop processing 6pm RAW files. Sometimes trying to "sort" a couple hundred photos in a day for focus, color, exposure, and DOF. Because of my lack of storage space 40 + 160 gig I am very liberal with the trash can. Many rimes 2 1 gig CF cards full end up being only 20 photos saved.

When I get PS running I don't dare shut it down until I have completed my days processing, because it takes so long to come up. Sometimes, like you Jim, I run a filter and walk away to work on something else for a while, and occasionally the famous "Blue Screen of Death" comes up durring processing.

I keep putting off the new PC purchase "until next year". I guess it's just not next year yet.

Always have backups,

Caleb

[gldiana]

Hey Jim,

man, I don't want to be the one dancing the rain-dance on your parade but... it's a common sense issue, don't you think? As you manage more data your computer needs to be more powerful enough to handle it. At the very least a memory upgrade is necessary. To be able to work on my RAW photos comfortably (Canon EOS30D) I custom built a computer with 2GB of RAM and 1/2 GB of Video RAM, plus 400GB RAID0 twin Hard Drives: it's a lightning and I don't have to wait for processing time much. I never had a doubt that my old computer could not speedily process the amount of information from my new camera, then again I used computers for many years and I know what to expect, but you said you were a PC Tech so you should have figured that one out before buying the camera, true?

Luca