D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

Home · Register · Search · Software · Hosting · Software · Join Upload & Sell

FM Forum Rules
Nikon SLRs, primes, and zooms lenses reviews

FM Forums \| Nikon-mount SLRs \| Join Upload & Sell
1 2 3 end

Michaelparris
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #1 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I have a Mac with 2.66 Ghz core 2 Duo and 8 Gb of Ram. How much difference will I see compared to my 5D MKII files

Aug 09, 2012 at 03:07 PM

MikeW
Online
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #2 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

you'd need to upgrade to a PC for sure!

For all digital editing you benefit from a quad core, 16+gig a ram & a SSD scratch disk along with a decent gfx card. Your mac will work but it will not be a speed demon. This isn't with just a D800. They are bigger files, but if you have the above covered already like you should then it isn't a big deal having bigger files.

Aug 09, 2012 at 03:16 PM

derry1
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #3 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I knew when I ordered my 800E that the three year old tower (32 bit) was going to be stretched,, so now a I7 processor with 16 gig and a very nice video board supports LR4.1 and handles the files very nice,,

all photos are raw and the last tower was not a speedy with the D300 raw files,,

can always give a try but can certainly recommend an up to date box for processing,,

Derry

Aug 09, 2012 at 03:21 PM

Sean Mills
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #4 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

They are much slower to work with than 5dmkII files. That's for sure.
About 50% more time to copy, transfer, bake out, etc.

If you need the res though, it's totally worth it. If you don't need the res, I would certainly consider a D700 or 5D2/3

Aug 09, 2012 at 03:22 PM

jojomon11
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #5 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

Slower at the end of the day, get more RAM

Aug 09, 2012 at 03:40 PM

Garrick L
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #6 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

Up your Ram and you will be fine. I have a Mac and see no reason to consider a PC ever again!

Aug 09, 2012 at 04:33 PM

Michaelparris
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #7 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I was under the impression that with my configuration i am maxed at 8 gigs of ram

Aug 09, 2012 at 04:52 PM

Sean Mills
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #8 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

For me, 8 gigs would be tough. You can do it, via CS5/6 LR, but slowly, and not much else at the same time.
Like, tinkering with a few select shots would be easy enough, but modifying batches of dozens or hundreds of files at a time, would get pretty cumbersome.

If you patient and you need the res, you'll make it work. Otherwise a lower MP camera, or a faster computer would be preferable.

Aug 09, 2012 at 05:29 PM

CGrindahl
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #9 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

Garrick L wrote:
Up your Ram and you will be fine. I have a Mac and see no reason to consider a PC ever again!

He was joking... you're safe...

I have a new iMac but didn't opt for either the i7 processor or an SSD drive which can be added as a second drive with the current models. I did increase RAM to 16 GB which amazingly cost less than a hundred bucks. My computer was not happy processing D800 lossless compressed RAW files. It works beautifully with D700 RAW files. I was shooting with a friend's camera for a week so I had the opportunity to see what it is all about. The large files do not hold great appeal for me and after seeing my computer labor, choosing not to upgrade made even more sense. Maximizing RAM is imperative and adding an SSD drive would surely help.

Aug 09, 2012 at 06:05 PM

akclimber
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #10 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I've got a windows machine with comparable specs to your Mac (slightly faster CPU, same RAM) and yes, I find the D800e files are really stressing my machine. When editing I have to be very careful not to have too many layers open, etc. or my machine will slow to a crawl. My MB maxes out at 8 gigs of RAM so I'm either going to have to have my computer rebuilt or just buy another. We'll see. Regardless, given the costs of recently going dual system, it's going to be a while until I can process D800 with ease

Good luck!

Aug 09, 2012 at 06:07 PM

jhinkey
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #11 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I upgrade my i7 machine to 32GB of RAM and it's much happier than it was at 8GB.
But really the issue is disk space. My 1TB RAID drive is quickly filling up - in fact 3x faster than when I had my D700.

I now find that I must review my images and delete the ones that aren't keepers. I tend to be a bit trigger happy at times. With my D700 I kept every image.

Aug 09, 2012 at 06:08 PM

taob
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #12 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

Michaelparris wrote:
I have a Mac with 2.66 Ghz core 2 Duo and 8 Gb of Ram. How much difference will I see compared to my 5D MKII files
It depends on how much of your system's resources are used right now processing 5D2 files. A lot of people here are saying "just upgrade RAM". That only makes sense if RAM is a bottleneck. In many cases, it is not. For instance, I am processing thousands of D800 files in Bridge (same applies to Lightroom). If you already have 8 GB of RAM, adding more of it won't really help you much. Bridge and LR effectively only load up one image at a time, so their RAM requirements are much lighter than, say, Photoshop. I have 16GB installed on my system, and while I'm powering my way through the raw processing step, the system never goes much beyond 6 GB of RAM. That's with Chrome, OpenOffice, etc. running along with whatever background processes are there (Google Drive, Explorer, KeePass, etc.)

On the other hand, if you do a lot of work in Photoshop, open up several images at once, use a lot of layers, etc. then adding more RAM could be a benefit to you. Basically, figure out where the bottlenecks are (or will be) in your system, and address those in priority order. If you're using Adobe products, bumping up your GPU won't do anything. You might need more disk space before anything else. Or perhaps just faster disk (e.g., I upgraded to SSDs for my working files). Perhaps your CPU is maxed out because that shiny new SSD is able to shovel file data at it faster than the CPU can process it. There is no one universal answer to your question.

Aug 09, 2012 at 06:09 PM

pbraymond
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #13 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

taob wrote:
Michaelparris wrote:
I have a Mac with 2.66 Ghz core 2 Duo and 8 Gb of Ram. How much difference will I see compared to my 5D MKII files
It depends on how much of your system's resources are used right now processing 5D2 files. A lot of people here are saying "just upgrade RAM". That only makes sense if RAM is a bottleneck. In many cases, it is not. For instance, I am processing thousands of D800 files in Bridge (same applies to Lightroom). If you already have 8 GB of RAM, adding more of it won't really help you much. Bridge and LR effectively only load up one image at a time, so their RAM requirements are much lighter than, say, Photoshop. I have 16GB installed on my system, and while I'm powering my way through the raw processing step, the system never goes much beyond 6 GB of RAM. That's with Chrome, OpenOffice, etc. running along with whatever background processes are there (Google Drive, Explorer, KeePass, etc.)

On the other hand, if you do a lot of work in Photoshop, open up several images at once, use a lot of layers, etc. then adding more RAM could be a benefit to you. Basically, figure out where the bottlenecks are (or will be) in your system, and address those in priority order. If you're using Adobe products, bumping up your GPU won't do anything. You might need more disk space before anything else. Or perhaps just faster disk (e.g., I upgraded to SSDs for my working files). Perhaps your CPU is maxed out because that shiny new SSD is able to shovel file data at it faster than the CPU can process it. There is no one universal answer to your question.

Agree with the comment on LR and RAM. I'm running an overclocked i5 and LR never uses much beyond 4 GB of RAM with D800 RAW (and I have 24GB) but the CPU is maxed out at 100% during previews and adjustments in LR develop module. I know an overclocked i7 would help; if the CPU is at 100% I doubt even SSD would speed things up significantly.

And yes, the D800 files do take a lot longer than D700 files (have not measured), but it's very noticeable. I see 3 -5 second processing after adjustments in the develop module, compared almost instantaneous (amybe 1s) with D700 files in LR4.x. To be fair, LR3.x did not support D800 files, so I may be a little spoiled by the speed of LR3.x on D700 files and it's now clouding my judgement.

Aug 09, 2012 at 06:48 PM

Michaelparris
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #14 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

Thanks for the replies

Aug 09, 2012 at 10:32 PM

Pinarello65
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #15 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I'm using quad core PC, 24gb ram, windows7 64 bit on a SSD with a 2nd SSD as scratch drive. In my workflow, I import photos to the SSD as a first step, do my PP there then move the session to a hard drive when done. I find it quick enough for D800E lossless compressed RAW. I mirror backup to a second hard drive in the system, I have 6.5tb in hard drives. For long term storage i run backups to bluray discs and external usb drives. Storage is cheap and for a typical 16gb photo session, I can fit around 125 of those on an external usb drive costing $125. Thats $1/session. I store those off-site. I also upload PP images to Smugmug so I guess thats another backup!

Aug 09, 2012 at 11:15 PM

BrianJarvis
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #16 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I have a MBP 2.4 ghz 4 gig of RAM and while it can handle the D800 RAW files it's very slow. I do my processing on my new 3.4Ghz iMac with 16gis of RAM. Works fine there but I'll probably max out the RAM in the near future.

Aug 10, 2012 at 01:07 AM

CanonGolfGuy
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #17 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I have a 2.7 GHz Core i7 13" MBP with 8 GB of RAM, and it is definitely a noticeable difference vs what my 5D Mark II was. Nothing too painful, but it could certainly be faster. I plan to get an iMac eventually, but for now the MacBook will hold me over.

Aug 10, 2012 at 01:25 AM

BigIronCruiser
Online
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #18 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

I had a PC with 16gb memory and an i7-920 processor. Lightroom 4.1 was fine with D700 files, but painful with D800 files. I installed a SSD, which made no noticeable difference. I finally bought another PC with a 3930K processor. Lightroom performance with D800 files is much better, although not great. Adobe has some issues with LR 4 performance IMO. I don't know if Mac users are also complaining about LR 4.

Aug 10, 2012 at 02:34 AM

Michaelparris
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #19 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

So I guess ya'll are saying if I upgrade to a D800 I should probably upgrade my computer as well.....

Aug 10, 2012 at 03:55 AM

LXShooter
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #20 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer

Michaelparris wrote:
So I guess ya'll are saying if I upgrade to a D800 I should probably upgrade my computer as well.....

Exactly!

Aug 10, 2012 at 03:58 AM

1 2 3 end
FM Forums \| Nikon-mount SLRs \| Join Upload & Sell 1 2 3 end