Changing computers?

[david_henderson]

Robin, there's much in what you say. I have a Dell XPS now and its done ok for me for 11 years apart from a major C drive crash a couple of years back which was inconvenient rather than catastrophic. and my guy put a SSD in to replace it. I just checked out their video cards today in the context of advice above and indeed they are close to the top of the "recommended" lists. I have three internal drives installed and with one for C and the other two for photographs I still have space for another few years work. So I don't really need anything bigger- just newer which I hope will mean more reliability in future- and faster which I'm going to get with a 2022 machine rather than a 2011 one. I may well vote for similar again.

 

Images? They're all mine-private work. I do purge them on the way in for the simple reason that getting rid of the rubbish and repetitive stuff makes the retained pictures seem so much better. I purge in-camera too. Perhaps 25% of what I take doesn't last till I get home even. But the real good point is your last one. I know I could get the number down but it would take so much time and it would be soooo-- boring. And its not like in today's world it's costing me a fortune in drive space for images and back up. I reckoned once that I could spend a couple of months halving my # photographs and effectively pay myself no more than about £400 for that work. Maybe an internal drive and an external. And indeed if I'm in the wrong place on the computer replacement cycle I don't save much at all. I've got 2TB unused space on my current setup.

 

Go back 10+ years and offer me back half the money I spent on MF film and processing/mounting if only I'd have been a bit more selective, and that really would have been worthwhile. Add to that the savings I'd have made if I'd been more selective in having hundreds of prints made for myself some of them in the early days of hybrid workflows with people like West Coast Imaging scanning, proofing and printing for me and paying for Fedex packages bouncing between UK and California and wow.

[joseph_smith3]

Regarding the transfer of lots of image files, here is one option that could work for you if you have the same set up I have.

 

Images stored on a HDD or SSD external drive in an enclosure case. Your computer is a desktop that allows you access to add additional internal drives.

 

Open the external drive enclosure case and remove the HDD or SSD with the images.

 

Open the desktop and install the external drive into the appropriate slot.

 

Turn on the desktop and copy the images from drive letter assigned to the external drive to the drive letter with the new internal drive.

 

When done, remove the external drive and put it back into your enclosure case.

[invisibleflash]

Again my thanks to all who have responded. I've got a mass of stuff to digest across 100 responses, but I'm aware from my years as a consultant that most problems need to get more complicated before they can get simpler. I hope to act fairly quickly but I have no firm deadlines so I can wait till I have a clear plan laid out before I have boxes arriving.

 

Give us a rundown with photos on how it works out.

 

I hopefully fixed a problem I had with a certain program. Out of the blue Windows refused to run it due to security issues. Been running it for years. I installed program on thumbdrive and it seems to work, but have not tried out all facets.

[samstevens]

And its not like in today's world it's costing me a fortune in drive space for images and back up.

Yes. I have found the same thing.

I do purge them on the way in for the simple reason that getting rid of the rubbish and repetitive stuff makes the retained pictures seem so much better. I purge in-camera too. Perhaps 25% of what I take doesn't last till I get home even.

I purge very little. I would probably say I take less than an average number of shots, but still I store plenty of stuff I don't have an immediate liking or care for.

 

Every 6 months or so, I spend some time (from hours to a couple of days) going through old stuff. Every time I do that, I come across something that now interests me and stands out in a way it didn't at first.

 

I'm very careful about considering things rubbish, other than very extreme mistakes and misfires. I'm so aware of my vision and taste changing over the years, so I like allowing for the possibility that I'll see something worthwhile about a photo I did not see years ago. In many ways, I've liberated myself over the years from certain presumptions and limitations about what a good photo is and what I am capable of seeing and expressing, and what I may have rejected years ago takes on new life with a different set of eyes.

Go back 10+ years and offer me back half the money I spent on MF film and processing/mounting if only I'd have been a bit more selective, and that really would have been worthwhile.

Along similar lines, I understand your sentiment here but also believe that a lot of the time and money spent years ago may not have been as negligible as is sometimes assumed. It all got me here, including the many mistakes. If I don't allow myself a whole lot of mistakes, I generally don't grow as much. For me, photography is as much a process as it is the finished photo. The finished photo arrives not just by itself but via many of the shots that didn't make the cut.

 

Of course, some may feel they over-shoot and even shoot obsessively, so some balance and trimming may be in order.

[invisibleflash]

Yes. I have found the same thing.

 

I purge very little. I would probably say I take less than an average number of shots, but still I store plenty of stuff I don't have an immediate liking or care for.

 

Every 6 months or so, I spend some time (from hours to a couple of days) going through old stuff. Every time I do that, I come across something that now interests me and stands out in a way it didn't at first.

 

I'm very careful about considering things rubbish, other than very extreme mistakes and misfires. I'm so aware of my vision and taste changing over the years, so I like allowing for the possibility that I'll see something worthwhile about a photo I did not see years ago. In many ways, I've liberated myself over the years from certain presumptions and limitations about what a good photo is and what I am capable of seeing and expressing, and what I may have rejected years ago takes on new life with a different set of eyes.

 

Along similar lines, I understand your sentiment here but also believe that a lot of the time and money spent years ago may not have been as negligible as is sometimes assumed. It all got me here, including the many mistakes. If I don't allow myself a whole lot of mistakes, I generally don't grow as much. For me, photography is as much a process as it is the finished photo. The finished photo arrives not just by itself but via many of the shots that didn't make the cut.

 

Of course, some may feel they over-shoot and even shoot obsessively, so some balance and trimming may be in order.

 

You can always save the SD cards as film. Then you got it all! Every 5 - 6 years, back up the cards to BD-R or M-Disc.

[samstevens]

You can always save the SD cards as film. Then you got it all! Every 5 - 6 years, back up the cards to BD-R or M-Disc.

Thanks. I find it works well to reuse my cards as working cards and, after each shoot, I find it easy to copy the full card to both an internal and external drive, and then reuse the card. I also have an off-sight backup. However, I'm by no means an expert on this. Is there a danger or less efficiency to what I'm doing?

[invisibleflash]

I'd ignore the people who disparage you for not knowing more about computers. Not worth your psychological energy thinking about them.

 

Re old peripheral equipment: it depends. Some older equipment will work fine. Some may not. For example, if I remember right (I may not), the calibration tool I had been using was never made Windows 10 compliant, so I had to buy a new one when I upgraded to Windows 10 years ago. However, from what I have read, the internals of Windows 11 are quite similar to Windows 10, so I'm guessing that most of your old peripherals will work fine. If not, search online for workarounds for the specific equipment, and if there aren't any, you'll have to replace them.

 

If you think you will update your Adobe apps, the choice of graphics card matters. Some of the newer features of Photoshop will run poorly or won't run at all if you have a card that doesn't meet their specs. You can find their requirements here and here.

 

Your USB peripherals are presumably USB 2.0 because they are old. Your new machine will have at least some USB 3.0 ports (the more the merrier), and those ports are downwardly compatible. However, transfer speed will still be slow because of the peripherals themselves. My suggestion: don't worry about this. If you need to leave the computer running a few times while you go do something else, no big deal. If your computer comes with USB-C ports (that's the physical form, not the transfer rate), that's also no big deal; you can buy USB-B to USB-c dongles for a few bucks.

 

Memory requirements are also on one of the pages I linked. Adobe recommends 16 GB. That's what I have. It works fine. I don't know whether 32 would produce much of an increase in speed. I wouldn't consider 64.

 

Re processor: I can't help there. I stopped tracking this a long time ago, and I find Intel's current naming conventions confusing. I'm using a 4-year old 4-core i7-7700 @ 3.6 GHz, and it's adequate. I would buy faster now, but I don't know which to recommend.

 

Re how to do it: because of where I work, I usually have to replace all of my computers (I have 3) every 3 years or so. I start by making a list of all of the software on the old machine and any configurations I can think of that I want to preserve. I then prep the new one by gradually installing software and configuring the new one, while continuing to use the old one as the functioning computer. Toward the end, I terminate the registration for any software that can only be installed on a few machines to transfer those to the new one.

 

You'll need a way to transfer files from your old internal drive to your new one. that is only one of the reasons that one of my first steps is to install an aftermarket file manager that allows me to see two directories or drives at once and allows me to sync between them. There are lots of these, but I currently use Directory Opus. I get a big thumb drive (they are now dirt cheap), sync or copy content to that, then pull it from that to the new drive.

 

Good luck.

 

One thing that I find invaluable is a decent file manager, which Windows doesn't include.

 

Everyone has their talents. I'm an old film photog from the 70's. I'm not too computer savvy, but savvy enough to do what I did in the darkroom. Really, I don't even like computers all that much. They are just tools. A lot of the big name photogs probably have people doing their post work, printing etc. So they don't have to do the grunt work.

 

As far as LR 5, very happy with it. No need to change unless I hit a windfall lotto. What I need is a cine' 16mm sound scanner. My still equipment is more or less fine.

 

Here is a photo I shot back in '73 with a Hassy SWC and available light. Agfa silver gelatin print on left. The 2012 (or 13?) inkjet version on right has 2-1/2 hours of Lightroom on it. (Plus, some single image HDR)

 

 

What is wrong with that?

 

I think it was Lightroom 3 or 4. Can't remember. As I said, I'm just looking to do what I did in the wet darkroom.

 

 

But after using LR 3 on one of my old computers, I feel like a king with LR5!

 

What LR are they up to now?

[invisibleflash]

Thanks. I find it works well to reuse my cards as working cards and, after each shoot, I find it easy to copy the full card to both an internal and external drive, and then reuse the card. I also have an off-sight backup. However, I'm by no means an expert on this. Is there a danger or less efficiency to what I'm doing?

 

Depends on if you are a scatter brain like me. I also do as you do, but when I get cleaning, I delete stuff. Sometimes things get lost even without cleaning! I have had to go back to the cards more than a few times. They are cheap scatter brain backup for me.

[samstevens]

Depends on if you are a scatter brain like me. I also do as you do, but when I get cleaning, I delete stuff. Sometimes things get lost even without cleaning! I have had to go back to the cards more than a few times. They are cheap scatter brain backup for me.

lol. Got it. I tend not to be scatter-brained though, as I reach toward seventy, I do notice a bit more spillage. So I'll keep your process in mind for when more and more details start seeping through the cracks. Thanks.

[httpwww.photo.netbarry]

Computing requirements for still photography are not really very onerous. If you are going Dell why not get one of their XPS line, make sure you have a large SSD and lots of RAM (but don't go overboard), and you're all set for the next 10 years (I think they all come with decent video cards). I think the XPSs, for example, have plenty of room for hardware expansion if needed. HP have similar systems. Of course you could also waste lots of money on Apple stuff too:)

 

As to the 50,000 images, my question is whether you really need all these. Are they yours or client shots? If they are yours I would purge them, sounds like you have way too many. Mind you, since you do have that many and presumably a lot of them are seconds/repeats it might take so much time going through them you'll be too exhausted to continue.

 

Second Robin's recommendation for your computer choice given what I've seen through the thread. But I wouldn't agree to purging your images, especially if they have value to you and particularly if you ever want them available for any professional use. As you said storage options are relatively inexpensive though by no means cheap, it's more of a question of your strategy to save them, part of your original question.

[bgelfand]

Invisible Flash wrote: "You can always save the SD cards as film. Then you got it all! Every 5 - 6 years, back up the cards to BD-R or M-Disc."

 

I am not certain that any unpowered Flash memory would make a good long term storage medium. At their heart Flash cells are nothing more than capacitors. All capacitors leak charge over time. I am not sure how long data can be stored on Flash - I have read anywhere from months to decades - but nothing I would risk all my images on.

[AlanKlein]

I've never tried B&H for computers, but I know they have a computer division that specializes in photography and tailors their equipment to meet photographers' needs. So they might be a good source to discuss software/hardware coordination, sizes, memory, and other requirements.

[digitaldog]

I've never tried B&H for computers, ....

Terrific (assumptive) recommendation....

You also don't seem to be aware that David, the OP lives in Datchet, a village on the Thames west of London and near Windsor.

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