Will I need a new computer if I get a D800

My husband just doesn't "get" my photography hobby. I'm not a professional but I have done senior sessions for friends and family. I mainly enjoy taking photos for myself....mainly landscape, nature, and family. I also love action/sports photography but will keep using my D300 for that with a grip.

I just got on a list for a D800 but now see on this forum that I might need a new computer to be able to upload my images. I use PSE10 for editing and below is my computer. I also have a newer laptop but it still is not Leopard.

Mac OS X
Version 10.5.8
Processor 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 4GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Try downloading a jog or raw, and have a play with it, edit it etc.

See how it feels

What do you mean? I don't have the camera yet. Was wondering if with the much larger file sizes if I would need a new computer. I can do RAW from my D300 right now fine.

He means download a raw file from this website. You can download the images that the camera produces and play with them without having to have the camera. Look at this link, there are raw files available for many cameras. Download one to your machine and start looking into how to process it. Odds are, you need to download adobe dng converter to convert the nef file into a dng, then you can open it with most versions of photoshop.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d800-d800e/29

In short, no, you dont need a new computer. It just may be a little slower with a bigger file. If you worked with thousands of photos weekly, then maybe you would need a new one just to keep productive, but it sounds like a hobby, so you are probably fine. The raw files may be twice the size of other raw files, so plan on twice as slow.

Nahh, I am still using my PC-XT, but I must say its getting a little tiresome swapping out the HDD for every image

I was told that you need to have a bus speed of 3.0 or DDR3 which the D800 port is running on. Uploading images from the camera to the computer will take longer. This information was acquired from Nikon tech support. If your computer is new within the last 6 months that should have the latest port speed.

Debbie said:

My husband just doesn't "get" my photography hobby. I'm not a professional but I have done senior sessions for friends and family. I mainly enjoy taking photos for myself....mainly landscape, nature, and family. I also love action/sports photography but will keep using my D300 for that with a grip.

I just got on a list for a D800 but now see on this forum that I might need a new computer to be able to upload my images. I use PSE10 for editing and below is my computer. I also have a newer laptop but it still is not Leopard.

Mac OS X
Version 10.5.8
Processor 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 4GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Click to expand...

Do what you like in this life. My wife has no hobbies, but that didn't stop me for investing in photography.

Cheers!
vh

Thank you so much for such a nice informative answer. I have downloaded the files but now I need to get on the road to Chicago. I will play more tomorrow evening. Again, thank you.

No, you won't need it. So far it's not too bad on my 3 year old Core 2 Duo. Would I like faster? You bet, for now I'm getting by.
--
"You're guaranteed to miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Well, you'll definitely need a new & much bigger hard drive. . That's for sure.

My Quad Core PC is 4.5 years old and it has no trouble with my D800 files. I am only running 4 GB of RAM.

I'm also having no trouble taking very sharp handheld shots with shutters of 1/focal and every Nikkor I have tried on it looks great. All of what I just said goes against many posts on this forum, but this is my experience with the camera.

Debbie said:

My husband just doesn't "get" my photography hobby. I'm not a professional but I have done senior sessions for friends and family. I mainly enjoy taking photos for myself....mainly landscape, nature, and family. I also love action/sports photography but will keep using my D300 for that with a grip.

I just got on a list for a D800 but now see on this forum that I might need a new computer to be able to upload my images. I use PSE10 for editing and below is my computer. I also have a newer laptop but it still is not Leopard.

Mac OS X
Version 10.5.8
Processor 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 4GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Click to expand...

Hi Debbie, I am a Mac person and am not sure. I would double check with the Mac Forum, they are quite knowledgable about what works.
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Cheers, BB
FlickR site
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandon_birder/
Flickr D800 gallery
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandon_birder/sets/72157629726734905/
FlickR Nikon1 V1 gallery
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandon_birder/sets/72157628774050455/

The one thing I would add to your computer, if you don't already have one, is a USB3 port. The card reader and USB port will cost you about $70. It saves a lot of time downloading large RAW files.

Debbie said:

My husband just doesn't "get" my photography hobby. I'm not a professional but I have done senior sessions for friends and family. I mainly enjoy taking photos for myself....mainly landscape, nature, and family. I also love action/sports photography but will keep using my D300 for that with a grip.

I just got on a list for a D800 but now see on this forum that I might need a new computer to be able to upload my images. I use PSE10 for editing and below is my computer. I also have a newer laptop but it still is not Leopard.

Mac OS X
Version 10.5.8
Processor 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 4GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Click to expand...

It really depends on what you want to do and how fast you want things to go.

For really basic work, use View NX, which to me is very fast on a 4G MacBook Air. It should be compatible with 10.5.8.

For actual editing, you may want to use Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom or Capture NX, and there I think your computer should still be fine - provided you are a patient person.

--
http://photophindings.blogspot.com/
http://picasaweb.google.com/nmlewan

You could get a kit from newegg.com for appx $250...slap some extra memory and whatever else you wish to add and you're ready to rock&roll. Putting computer together is not that complicated....they even provide a video how to. That's the way I'm thinking about going....and the rig will be offline. Then again, you can spend X-amount on an Apple.

Leswick

My computer is the same as yours and it has been doing fine with the d800 files. Yes it is slower than it was with my d3 but it is not a problem.

This is likely to be subjective for each person and I guess it depends on how you shoot and how you like to edit and process your photos.

Debbie, if you are not doing it professionally and don't take hundreds of photos at a time that need processing, you might find it find to just process a few here and there on your current system.

But if you shoot a lot, say a few hundred or more at a time, such at a sports event, then you might find the work flow slows down a little bit. That's when you need to ask yourself whether it's worth upgrading or not.

In your situation you've potentially got a few options. You could upgrade your operating system to the latest version of Mac OSX and at least double your RAM from 4GB to 8GB. You could still upgrade to better software as well, such as Adobe Photoshop CS6 (which you can now get on subscription through the cloud and can also give the trial a go to see if there is any difference). You may want to consider (if possible) in investing in an SSD hardrive (or if you buy a new machine, get one with that).

If all that is still not to your liking then maybe it's worth considering a new machine, but you'd be looking at an expensive outlay. I've a Mac Pro with 3.2Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon and have just upgraded it from 8GB to 16GB RAM. I use Adobe Photoshop CS6 and edit directly off an external drive (a Drobo), which is a lot slower than editing directly on the local hardrive but I still find it very acceptable and I can sometimes come home with hundreds of RAW files to process. I've found CS6 to be faster than CS5.1.

It's certainly not something you need to jump straight into. You can get the camera first and give it a go before deciding.

Hope that helps.

--
http://www.neildejyothin.com

Your computer is ok but you will need a big hard drive and back up drive for the photos because the files are big especially RAW NEF files. Hard drives are cheap, you didn't really say what Mac you have but it looks like an iMac. I would get two 2 TB external Firewire Hard drives for basic file storage. More memory would be better but 4GB is OK.
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see about me in my profile for more info
http://500px.com/LisaOsta
http://www.flickr.com/photos/losta

I just wrote the post above and I was just reading some of the other responses. Some are rubbish.
I am a former Mac Genius, presently Mac IT consultant.
You can't add USB 3 to a 2-3 year old Mac or any Mac.

Don't worry about the bis speed of your Mac. You shouldn't connect the camera to it anyway to download photos anyone that does that is in the dark ages.

Firewire is the fastest port you have you can get a Firewire 800 CF card reader and hard drives.

You can get more info about your Mac under the apple on the top left> about this mac> more info
Under system or hardware info it will say which model Mac you have and version
mine says MacBookPro8.2

You may be able to have up to 8GB of memory which you can buy at places like macsales.com for under$100

I would get a copy of Lightroom 4 and use it along with your current photoshop elements for a while if you are short on cash.
Send me a message here if you have other questions.

--
see about me in my profile for more info
http://500px.com/LisaOsta
http://www.flickr.com/photos/losta

Count on it. I just built new computer with a large, fast SS; one of the fastest intel i7 processors, all top-end components,12 GB of RAM and 64-bit windows 7. When they released the 64-bit version of Capture NX2, the12MB Raw files from my D300 and D700 processed almost instantly. The 14-bit, lossless compressed D800 RAW file slow everything down to the pre-64-bit days.