Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Switching to Mac



Image: stream, 5D2, 24-105 f4 IS L, f11, .6 sec, CPL and 3 stop GND.

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Switching to a Mac was something I have been wanting to do for a long time, my PC died on me a few weeks ago so I took the plunge, after some research of course. I use LR, CS3, DPP and ACDsee, these needed to work or have an equal on the Mac side. Lightroom no problem its cross platform, CS3 ; I had to get a cross platform upgrade to CS4, $200, ok. Digital Photo Pro again cross platform, no problem. ACDsee; well that one turned out its in beta test and may be a while, so I needed a photo browser and to the rescue came Photo Mechanic, great cross platform photo browser. So the stage was set, getting a Mac was harder than I thought it would be, the Apple store would not give me the same price for an upgraded Mac Pro as I could get on line, by a long ways. so after some headaches and running around I ended up at The Mac store, which is not owned by Apple, they configured my computer and I was on my way. I tell you I could not be happier so far, all my software works, and it is fast and has a clean interface, easy to learn, just wish I had done it sooner. Ended up with a Mac Pro quad core 2.66 Ghz, 6 GB of DDR3 RAM, I priced out a top end PC and they are very close in price if you put all top end hardware in a PC like they do in a Mac. So I say if your thinking about it, go for it, get a Mac.

Ross Murphy Images In Light

4 comments:

  1. Welcome to the land of Mac. I am glad you 'drank the kool-aid'. :-) I switched from PC about 3 years ago now and never looked back. I love them. Of course, I write this from the Apple WWDC conference. I have been programming for ~30 years now but only just recently got into photography. Got a canon XSi about 1 year ago and really started taking pictures about 4 months ago (long story). I just found your blog and really enjoy it.

    I also live around where you take pictures. Currently over in West Seattle. I just recently got a kind-a-cheap granduated ND filter set that I can wait to play with. I see what you have been doing with ND filters, which is looks like I should get, and am pretty motivated. I really like the 'god rays'.

    Anyway, thanks for the great blog and info. I will be reading often.

    Greg.

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  2. Hi Greg, welcome to the world of photography, its a lot of fun and I get a great amount of satisfaction in passing along my knowledge of taking photos, get out there and take some great images.
    Ross

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  3. Hi Ross. I just figured out that I have taken 6386 photos in the last year since I bought my XSi. 3400 of those in the last 11 weeks. I have been really busy since I decided to get serious about making photos in March of this year. Out of all of those 6386 photos I have kept about 1/2, and of that 1/2 I have maybe 150 that I like. The rest I keep because disk space is cheap and a lot of them have sentimental value but are not really good photos.

    What is your 'keeper rate'? Do you eventually get better so that you don't delete as many? I find I throw a lot of photos away because of focus, DOF problems or something else technical. But, more often then not, it is just a boring photo with no interesting composition. I think that is the hard part for me so far.

    --greg.

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  4. I don't know my keeper rate, its not that high, I am happy if I go on a shoot and come back with at least one keeper, it has been going up, is that due to experience, maybe, but its good to get more images that I like. Work on your short weakness at composition and it will improve.
    Ross

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