Question for people who process RAW images

[HappyFotographer]

OK, thought I would be brave and shot some hasty images of the kids playing using RAW.

I then tried to open them in Nikon Capture.......OMG, it took so long for one image to load, let alone attempt to do anything with it.

So I thought I would check what computers you guys are using. My computer was old when dirt was young, so I am really thinking I need to either upgrade (yeah right) or forget the whole RAW thing.

My system looks like this:

Intel Pentium III
448 MHz
128MB of RAM
Running XP Professional, SP1

OK, stop laughing and give me an idea of what sort of system I will need to successfully process RAW images.

Cheers
Deb

[sirhc55]

I think you have answered your own question! The specs are just a wee bit ancient.

Chris

[JordanP]

I find it slow with 512 meg ram. Don't they specify 256 as a minimum?

[tsanglabs]

I usually upgrade every 2 years or so and my last upgrade was about a year and 1/2 ago.

AMD 2800 XP Barton Core
768MB RAM
XP SP1 (I refuse to use SP2 after it screwed my computer up)
ATi Radeon 9700

You should not get the best, most expensive parts as they get superseeded quite quickly.

[HappyFotographer]

*sigh* thought as much.

I just loaded the trial version, so didn't see any minimum requirements for it......but I just needed to hear it from others......

.....now to convince the other half.

[AlistairF]

HappyFoto, A quick and cheap fix would be a RAM upgrade. That 128Mb is just enough to run XP by itself. You could pick up an additional 256Mb for under $100 to stop that hard drive of yours chattering away.

Alistair

[birddog114]

OK, thought I would be brave and shot some hasty images of the kids playing using RAW.

I then tried to open them in Nikon Capture.......OMG, it took so long for one image to load, let alone attempt to do anything with it.

So I thought I would check what computers you guys are using. My computer was old when dirt was young, so I am really thinking I need to either upgrade (yeah right) or forget the whole RAW thing.

My system looks like this:

Intel Pentium III
448 MHz
128MB of RAM
Running XP Professional, SP1

OK, stop laughing and give me an idea of what sort of system I will need to successfully process RAW images.

Cheers
Deb

HappyPhotographer,
You should pay me a visit right now, just less than 5 min from your home and I'll show you how fast my PCs load 10 NEF files up in one go.
And I'll tell ya , what you should need.

[Greg B]

I'm afraid you are going to be UNhappyfotographer, because what you have there is a real pretty paper weight.

Birdy will sort you out, but make sure you get a gig of RAM.

good luck

[HappyFotographer]

Thanks Greg....unfortunately my choice was between a new computer or the D70....and although I kept telling myself I could live without the camera, my man saw through it and got me the camera.....so this paper weight will have to do me a little while.

I'm afraid you are going to be UNhappyfotographer, because what you have there is a real pretty paper weight.

Birdy will sort you out, but make sure you get a gig of RAM.

good luck

I will be able to go to Birdy's for a quick visit on Saturday, so I will let him tease me.......then I will go home and take it out on my man! LOL.....(although he did agree I would need at least a gig of RAM...so there might be hope for me!)

[HappyFotographer]

That would probably bring me to tears. Right now I am planning on letting the computer overnight do a batch job on converting the NEF files to JPEGs......it's the only way I will be able to view them. *sigh* it's all a learning experience.

You should pay me a visit right now, just less than 5 min from your home and I'll show you how fast my PCs load 10 NEF files up in one go.

Hope to get there Saturday......I have 3 of the short kind hanging off me, otherwise I would be there now drooling!

cheers
Deb

[Greg B]

Looking on the (very) bright side, you have a D70, and that is the most important thing.

There is no shame in shooting jpegs, plenty of people here do by choice, I switch between jpegs and nefs because I can't decide.

However, your computer will handle them quite well (although another chunk of RAM would be very useful, and you could probably get it 2nd hand for next to nothing. We have a zillion IT people here, someone, are you listening!!)

Concentrate on the camera, and when you get the new confuser, move over to nefs then.

cheers

[MattC]

I started off processing NEF's from my CP5700 on a Celeron 466 running W2K. I had 512MB of memory installed, and while performance was not brilliant (pretty cruisey actually), it was adequate for EV and WB adjustments then straight to PS6. I had to manage what I had open so that the disk was not copping a flogging.

That computer now serves as a Linux firewall/router.

Cheers

Matt

[Onyx]

Deb, I'm surprised you managed to get XP running on a P3. IIRC, the Pentium3 generation don't use DDR ram, which are the standard these days, so trying to upgrade probably won't be worth your while. A basic new system for around $600 should get you by. There endless computer stores that could offer cost effect solutions (the host of our meet on the 8th might be able to help you here as well).

[bwhinnen]

Deb, I'm surprised you managed to get XP running on a P3. IIRC, the Pentium3 generation don't use DDR ram, which are the standard these days, so trying to upgrade probably won't be worth your while. A basic new system for around $600 should get you by. There endless computer stores that could offer cost effect solutions (the host of our meet on the 8th might be able to help you here as well).

You can, it's just slow. As has been stated the 128Mb will be entirely (almost) taken up by the OS itself leaving nothing for pic processing. 256Mb is a minimum with XP IMHO. My wife runs XP on a PIII 700 with 384Mb of RAM and it runs surprisingly well.

Memory is the key with photo processing, the more the better.

Cheers
Brett

[Raydar]

I’ve just upgraded from a 1.6 Athlon to a 2.8 gig Pent & from 512 Meg Ram to 768 Meg, thanks to a winning raffle ticket!!!!!

I’ve found that PS CS is a lot more Mem hungry than Ver 7 so the upgrade has been a great bonus.
With a LCD monitor All has become alot easier

Cheers
Ray

[HappyFotographer]

Deb, I'm surprised you managed to get XP running on a P3. IIRC, the Pentium3 generation don't use DDR ram, which are the standard these days, so trying to upgrade probably won't be worth your while.

The speed isn't great, but it has worked OK for me. I also run PS CS.....and that can take some time to get things done, but nothing like what NC was doing with the NEFs.

I had Windows ME second edition and the damn thing kept blue screening on me.....so XP has been a blessing to date.

I'll see what BirdDog suggests, and then maybe I can sell one of the children

Thanks for the input everyone.

[HappyFotographer]

Sorry, something happened to the internet connection after I hit the submit button and it all appeared to halt, so I clicked it again and BANG, double posting.

Cheers
Deb

[mudder]

G'day Happy,
When I was using my original P3/500 with 128M (running XP) the machine was basically spending most of its time swapping all the time, threw in a Gig of memory and voila, the tests went from many minutes to seconds, simply by reducing the swapping and paging... Swapping/disk activity is the killer I reckon...

Now running a P4/2.7G with 1G of ram and it still swaps on large PP stuff when using Nikon Capture (which doesn't appear to be very memory efficient) or panos, I think memory is the key just to keep away from the disk, but I don't think I'd get a heap of memory for an old architecture though, as you'll probably upgrade soon and need to repeat your memory upgrade... So long as you don't get the latest whizz-bang fastest CPU on the block, you can get PC upgrades pretty cheap these days.

Don't know if that helps, but for what it's worth

Cheers,
Mudder

[skippy]

Happy, if you can find out what motherboard you have and the number of free memory slots, you might find that people on this forum could donate to a worthy cause. I think I have some old DIMMs at home that might go in it, but we'd need the motherboard (or at least chipset) to be sure the mem would be compatible.

[HappyFotographer]

Wow Skippy, thanks for the offer.

I will ask the man to check out the finer details for me, I don't have a clue.

Cheers
Deb

[Raydar]

I have two 128 mem SD Ram sticks here if you would like them as well

Cheers
Ray