New Lenses or PC for Photography?

[levon_monte]

<p>So here's my dilemma. I have $500 to spend and I need both a new PC and lenses to help my photography.<br>

I'm pro-amateur and do portraits once in a while, but I take photos daily for my blog and do a lot of editing. I have a crappy sigma 28-70, but I'm borrowing a buddy's old 18-55, the old version without IS. I want to get the newer 18-55mm IS kit lens, the 50mm f/1.8 and 55-250mm IS. I can get them on CentralDigital.com for $473 shipped. I need new lenses so I can have decent equipment for my photos. I would like to buy at least the 18-55 or 50mm this week, i have a portrait shoot and my wife's 30th birthday to shoot this weekend! Any advice on which one is more crucial to have for these events?<br>

I also need a new PC. My PC just about freezes anytime I simply open my pictures folder, I have about 120GB of photos. It's a five year old pentium 4 with 512mb RAM. It's slow as a dog, even when browsing the net. It's really hard to edit with, I even had to remove Elements because it made my PC run so slow. I use Paintshop Pro for all my editing. I don't do any professional work, but I do need a faster running PC for my photos and in general. I can get a Dell 580 with i3 540 processor, 4mb RAM, and 320GB hard drive for $530 shipped. This price is a limited time because it's through my work's employee discount, it's $140 in savings off retail. This is a screaming fast new PC, my only concern is that it's only 320GB, I am already using 155MB on my current HD, I think I need 500-750GB to last me a few years. I also picture a huge headache setting it up and moving all my old stuff onto my new PC. Is it that hard to do?<br>

So I know most will be biased towards the lenses because this is a photo forum, but I kind of have to choose one or the other. Or I could buy the 18-55 and 50mm and save the $250 towards the PC in a few months, but it may be more expensive by then if the discounts expire.<br>

Thanks for your opinion...</p>

[peter_j2]

<p>This is the system and 6 year old desktop computer I am typing on:</p>

<ol>

<li>Microsoft Windows XP Professional Version 2002, Service Pack 3.</li>

<li>Intel Pentium 4 CPU, 2.60 GHz, 2.00 GB of RAM.</li>

</ol>

<p>Adobe Photoshop Creative Suites 3 is loaded and it is fast enough for me. My 10 month old Lenovo 3000 G350 notebook with Windows 7 and CS3 is even faster.</p>

<p>So, you can either increase the RAM or just get a new and faster PC. The PC's are relatively more affordable now.</p>

<p>In the time being, use what you have in terms of lenses and then build your lens arsenal <strong>methodically</strong>. You would rather buy once and keep the lenses for a long time.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Before you do ANYTHING else, get a back-up drive for your files. If the only copies you have are on your current computer's internal disk drive, you're walking on very thin ice indeed. And that situation won't change just because you get a new computer. You need at least one (and ideally at least two) removeable external drives where you can keep redundant copies of your work - especially work you're charging people to do. Once you make regular backups, remove that external drive and store it somewhere else, away from your computer (in case of fire, theft, etc). You don't want to leave it connected as you do your normal work, since anything that might trash the computer might also trash anything on drives connected to it.<br /><br />As for your lens shopping: if you're not going to deal with one of the larger, reputable stores (like B&H, Adorama, Amazon, etc), be sure to check out your potential retailer's history by looking them up at ResellerRatings.com. You'll find that CentralDigital.com has a somewhat dicey record of doing the follow-up sales pressure calls, may not always be selling items under real warranties, etc. Be careful, that's all.<br /><br />Specific recommendations on lenses might be tricky until you mentionl what camera you're using.</p>

[alan_chan4]

<p>The cheapest way of upgrading your PC is by max out the RAM your motherboard can support, and swap the P4 CPU with the fastest HT one which costs almost nothing now. Then you can spend the rest on a pair of big hard drives. As to the lenses, there is not much point jumping from one low-end zoom to another.</p>

[steven_crist]

<p>512 is definately not enough RAM. You should up your RAM to at least 2gb. That would be cheap to do and really improve the performance of your PC. You do have anti-virus and anti-spam programs protecting you, correct? Step two would be to get <strong>good </strong>lenses. Finally if your computer is still not meeting expectations, get a new one.</p>

[jaydesi]

<p>Your computer deal sounds good...you can pick up a case to turn an internal hard drive into an external drive and a 1 TB drive for less than $100 at tigerdirect.com.</p>

[kerry_grim]

<p>I agree with others regarding a PC. First get an external backup drive, 1 TB and backup. If you do not back up at all, do that today. Max out your current PC with RAM which may support only 4G. Do not go for the Dell. Not sure what that model is, but a 320GB drive is too low for an avid photographer. Increasing the RAM will likely be the single best thing to speed up your computer. Save for a computer and make sure it has a much larger hard drive.</p>

<p>Don't let yourself be pressured in order a Dell quickly. They have discounts all the time. I've had good luck with Dell except for an extreme amount of problems with the touch pad. Apple gets it right. Google and you will find out what I mean.</p>

<p>One sneaky trick Dell does on its customers...go through their website, configure a PC and get a price. Next day, go back, and the price is higher, the discount is gone. What happened? Well, Dell put a cookie on your computer. If you erase that cookie and start over, you will find the price as it was the first time. I am sure this is legal but it is sneaky. Not sure if they practice this any longer, but something to be aware of.</p>

[prasad_apte]

<p>Hey Levon<br />I will also say that lens is most important part of photographers life, your PC is not that bad, as other said you just need to get goo RAM, get external hard disc and from the rest get the lens you can. And most important thing is it's not a good Idea to edit the photographs on laptop screen, they are not accurate at all like Good Old CRT monitors (hope you have CRT)<br />happy shooting<br />prasad</p>

[SCL]

<p>FWIW I would get a good external drive and move all your photos onto that drive. Next, I would add RAM, as much as you can. Then I would clean up your hard drive, defrag it, clean up your registry. You will find that everything works much faster if you have a drive which is 50% or less full and lots of RAM. I use a 5-6 yr old pc which I performed all the above on, and PS literally whizzes thru everything whereas before even opening a file was a painstaking process. As far as the lens goes, save that for another day...stop down what you have, practice a little more, and you should be good to go. </p>

[levon_monte]

<p>Hey guys, thanks for all the advice. I do have an external with my pics and music on it. I have upgraded my RAM to 2GB, from crucial. It didn't seem to do anything though! It actually made my PC run slower, so I returned it. I also degragged my HD and cleaned my registry. I run Malware Bytes once in a while and have WIndows Defender constantly running, so I don't think I have any viruses or anything. I thought that would do it. So my next guess is just to buy a whole new PC. I did buy the 18-55IS and 50mm f/1.8. I realize they're not pro quality glass, but better than what I have and in my budget and practical for my shoots. I just returned the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 because it was very disappointing for the money. Very soft and focus was horrible. I will do without the new PC for now. I will probably buy the new PC next month.</p>

<p>I'm using a Xti by the way...</p>

[oofoto]

<p>Save your money for glass.<br>

Back up all your files, rebuy the RAM and reinstall the PC with XP SP3 as a clean install. All your problems will be solved.<br>

If you want to prove to yourself that it may work doing that, create a new user in XP and logon as the new user instead and see if it runs any quicker. Also check out the size of your current profile - you'll find it is probably 100's of MB in size.<br>

It's not so much the age of the PC but the age and history of the OS and apps on the PC. Bet it wasn't slow when it was new eh?<br>

You must know a friendly IT guy?</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>If adding RAM to your machine slowed it down, it's because the swap file settings are wrong. If you change the machine's RAM configuration, you need to check the swap file behavior to make sure it's a good fit (usually, that should be about twice the RAM ... so, 4GB or so, in your case).</p>

[levon_monte]

<p>I actually did a clean install on the new 500GB HD i installed in it about a year ago. matt, you lost me, i have no idea how to do that. HOw do i do that? 2gb is my max ram capacity.<br>

I would like to reformat my HD, but it's such a pain to reload everything. Plus, I don't want to lose anything that doesn't get transferred the the external HD on accident. The XP cd i have has all the crap from Best Buy on it. I've deleted it from my PC after install.<br>

Unfortunately I don't know any techies, i wish, a nice dinner would be in for him for cleaning up this PC...</p>

[martin_engineer]

<p>Ask a knowledgeable friend to format your computer and reinstall Windows and all your software. Throw him a few bucks. That is the cheapest way to make your computer run faster.<br>

I must say "Don't buy a Dell" - because I find their customer service is lacking.<br>

Whatever computer you choose to buy, you can always upgrade the hard disk space by adding extra internal or external drives. You say that the PC only has 320GB?.... well for under $50 you can add another 500 GB.<br>

RAM upgrades can get tricky sometimes... try to keep it to the same brand, Speed, Latency.... best of all.. just dump your old Memory modules and simply install 2 GB of new memory.<br>

Whatever you do... get the 50mm f1.8 lens.</p>

[levon_monte]

<p>Thanks Martin, what do you recommend besides Dell? It seems there aren't many choices out there. I definitely can't afford a Mac, that'd be #1 choice.</p>

[levon_monte]

<p>Well, thanks for all the great advice guys. I decided to buy the canon 18-55mm IS and the 50mm f/1.8 lenses. My PC is still limping along, so I bought a new Emachines ET1831-07 for $384! This PC has great reviews and outperforms $550 PC's. I had a photo shoot this weekend, so that gave me some extra cash to by the PC. My new lenses worked out great, that 50mm is amazing for the price! I can't wait to get it and start being able to edit without frustration.</p>