System for D2X

[Dave Gardner]

I just got my D2X...and wow! The only thing is i'm using Nikon

Capture 4.2 and man do the files(NEF) slow down my system. It's a P4

with 1.5g of ram and the system is about 2years old.

 

It may be time for a new system...My question is does anyone have any

recommend on a system and components?

 

I thank you in advance.

 

Dave

[cham_saranasuriya]

Hi congratulations on your purchase.

 

What is the clock speed of your P4? P4 has got a lot of versions. You might also need to consider advice from Digital darkroom forum as well!

 

I may end up buying a D2X somestage. I am upgrading my System to P4/3.6Ghz (660 version)/2M cache/4 gig RAM. I hope this sytem will cope with D2X files as I am not keen to upgrade for few years. Interested to know anyone got experience with dual Xeon system & D2X files?

[paul_sokal___dallas__tx]

Dave,

 

I think the problem is mostly a software issue, and not your system. I was told by an instructor at a Nikon class that they know Capture isn't handling D2X files and thy're working on a fix. I did up grade to 2 GB RAM and thoguht I could see a little improvement. If you don't have a DVD burner, that's one thing I'd be sure to get because CD's are no longer large enough. Enjoy it. It's a great camera.

 

Paul

[olivier_reichenbach]

Nikon Capture 4.2.1 IS slow with the D2X files, Just to open one takes for ages on my

Power Mac G5, 1,6 mhz, 1 gig Ram, no slouch by any standard. It is a good program, but

Nikon really have to fix it.

[cliff_lesergent]

My AMD 64 processor, with 2GB or RAM, takes four seconds to process a D2X NEF file.

[cliff_lesergent]

I forgot to mention - I'm still using Capture 4.2 - I haven't been able to install the 4.2.1 upgrade yet. I understand that would speed things up even more...

[eric_perlberg]

I'm not a Windows user but I can make some general comments.

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1) I would switch from Nikon Capture to Photoshop CS2. This will leave you with a small problem that Nikon has encrypted the white balance info in the D2X files so you'll have to manually adjust the white balance. The advantages are that you'll be using a far more sophisticated and elegant tool to work with the files. I haven't messed with Nikon Capture since it went 4.0 but I've never been comfortable with it. That's just me of course.

<p>

2) I don't know how much RAM Nikon Capture can work with but the latest Photoshop (CS2) can work with 3.5 gigs of memory on Win XP Pro (and Mac OS X). More memory means less writing to the hard drive which makes things faster. You'll also need some memory for the OS. 4 gigs minimum.

<p>

3) Get fast hard drives. 7500rpm is the minimum, 10,000 rpm is better. Even faster can be a RAID setup for speed.

<p>

4) Get dual processors. Photoshop is dual processor aware. Photoshop will run almost twice as fast on many activities with dual processors.

<p>

There are many other little tweaks which make computers incrementally faster, bus speeds, back side caches, front side caches, etc.

<p>

Since you bought a top camera, might as well think through your colour management issues too while you're thinking of a new system. Eizo coloredge monitors are currently the most accurate LCD screens. You can run Apple monitors on a PC. They look nice, are good and much cheaper than the Eizo and the price just dropped. They're not as good as the Eizo however by a clear margin. Budget for a monitor calibration system like the Eye-One Display or the pulse system.

<p>

Since you're going for a new system and since you have one of the nicest cameras available in the world, you might as well give some thought to your back-up strategy. Lots has been written about this on the net. My current thinking is to get 3 hard drives. One for your system and office material things. Get a second for photoshop and your new massive files. Get a 3rd as a backup to your second. A fourth HD to back up your first would be good. Best not to use your start-up disk as a scratch disk for your image files. Slows things down to much.

<p>

Were you to decide to go over to an Apple Macintosh system, I'd consider a dual 2.3ghz machine with at least 4gig of ram. I wouldn't personally think of a 2.7ghz machine because the company which makes the liquid cooling system for it recently announced that they told Apple that it would only last for a minimum of 2 years before it might start leaking. The 30 inch Apple Cinema Display is not as accurate as the Eizo but its huge and competitively priced (and the price just went down by UK?300). You have with your D2X 12gb file sizes and it would be nice to do your editing in a way which allows you to see as much detail as possible. With the Apple 30 inch monitor you can see your images at almost 50% real size in landscape mode. (Apple's new OS now supports pivot monitors so if you go the Eizo CG21 or 210 route, you can pivot the monitor to take advantage of its 1600x1200 size depending on the image). Hope this helps.

[eric_perlberg]

oops, that should be 4 hard drive strategy for back-up and the 12 gb files sizes I mentioned are obviously the in camera size, they're probably closer to 60 or more megabytes on your computer. Your D2X takes images which are 4288 x 2848 pixels so on a 1600x1200 monitor you're essentially working at under 40% image size unless you magnify in which case you can make changes and not realise the effect on other parts of the image.

[walterh]

I was not aware of the expansion of memory useage by CS2. Does it work as one might wish? If it gives considerable advantage I might upgrade.

On current motherboards - how do you upgrade from 2 to 4 GBytes without loosing dual channel memory access? I am using the new ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard but have a problem keeping fast memory access with more than 2 memory cards of 1 GByte each. Or in other words - is PSCS2 faster handling large files with 4Gbyte of slower RAM than with 2GByte of faster RAM?

 

@Dave: I would forget about nikon Capture and do it all in PS :-P

 

cheers

walter

[eric_perlberg]

Walter, you can learn more about the memory situation on Photoshop CS2 <a href="http://photoshopnews.com/2005/04/04/photoshop-cs2%e2%80%93how-much-raw-%e2%80%93-fact/"> here</a>. Photoshopnews.com is run by some major industry heavyweights and is worth adding to your bookmark list if you use photoshop.

<p>

Cheers,

Eric

[ellis_vener_photography]

You need more RAM, probably a faster machine as well.

 

Also NEF files from the D2X (or Canon 1Ds mark 2 forthat matter or any of the 16 & 22mp

digital backs forthat matter) are big honkers: a D2X NEF file is about 20mb in size and if

you convert to a 16 bit per channel TIFF or PSD you now have a 70mb file to process.

 

it is also well known that Nikon Capture 4.2.1 is , shall be polite and say ,slow. If you want

a faster RAW converter try Bibble Pro. this may take some of the pressure of to buy a new

computer system.

[cliff_lesergent]

Is CS2 that big of an improvement over CS?

 

In my experience, not only is PS CS ACR no faster than Nikon Capture 4.2 at converting NEF files, but produces an inferior product as well (more noise, less detail, more artifacts, incorrect color, etc.) Workflow may be another matter, but if your goal is the best image quality, nothing surpasses NC.

[Dave Gardner]

I want to thank everyone here. You guys and gals, are the best! That?s what I love about this site. I was unaware that Nikon 4.. had a problem. I guess I have a lot to consider before running out and buying. Again thanks.

 

Dave

[cliff_lesergent]

Just did some informal testing with Nikon Capture 4.2 on my PC, with a stopwatch:

 

Processing D100 NEF file using NC 4.2 average time = 4.1 seconds

 

Processing D2X NEF file using NC 4.2 average time = 5.1 seconds

 

Processing D100 NEF file using Adobe Camera Raw average time = 9.5 seconds

 

Processing D2X NEF file using Adobe Camera Raw average time = 14.5 seconds (but program crashed after two file conversions).

 

Why is everybody complaining about Nikon Capture being slow?

[ilkka_nissila]

People are complaining because they think there should never be more than 1 second between two separate interactions of themselves and the computer.

 

Nikon Capture is extremely inefficient in its use of memory, but other than that, it is a fine program IMHO. I quite like the end results, and that's where it matters.

[ilkka_nissila]

The amusing thing about Capture 4.2 is that just doing the operations themselves don't seem to take much time but when it's not supposed to do anything special, like when trying to exit, it can take minutes ... so the lack of efficiency is not in the algorithms themselves but the user interface and the management of the operations it is trying to carry out. At least that is my perception.