Advice on Nikon D800-Concerned About File Size

[Roger3006]

Good Morning Everyone (depending on were you are),

I sell firearms online. Many of the guns I sell are quiet valuable and are considered functional art. I still must balance speed with quality. I shoot tethered in a studio. Lighting consist of Speed-O-Tron strobes with a variety of Chimera softboxes plus many other things I cannot describe that I rig up.

I was one of the last people to go from film to digital. I used pro equipment in film and am using semi-pro with digital. I have never been sorry that I bought high end and/or professional equipment regardless of what I am doing. I started with a D300 using a D90 for backup. My D90 finally died and I switched to a D7100 as my primary camera and use my D300 for backup. I am a strong believer in prime lenses and good glass.

I shoot tethered straight into Lightroom 5.3. The D7100 did speed me up by allowing me to shoot a little looser and crop more aggressively. Many of my shots never see Photoshop CC; however, some do. Often, it is faster to fix lighting issues in Photoshop rather than spending forever getting my lighting perfect. A firearm has a lot of curves and materials that vary drastically. To say the least, achieving correct exposure, over the entire gun, and eliminating hot shots is more than trying.

I did notice raw files (I shoot everything in RAW) from my D7100 took a little longer to load in Lightroom than my D300. It is still acceptable. My three thousand dollar question is how much longer will it take files from a D800 to load than with my D7100 assuming both are shot in an uncompressed RAW format. Also, relatively speaking, how much longer will it take to open a file in Photoshop CC from Lightroom? In short, is file size problematic with a D800.

I very much appreciate any and all input.

Thank you and y'all (yes I am a Southerner) have a great day,

Roger

 

[vimwiz]

What are the specs of the box you are manipulating the RAWs on?
(Memory, CPU, IO)

 

[D-B-J]

Really depends on your memory cards write speed, as well as the ram and processor in your laptop.


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[vimwiz]

Really depends on your memory cards write speed, as well as the ram and processor in your laptop.

The raw files are probably either cpu bound, in thier processing, or cant be held in memory, causing paging, and in either case, poor performance. This is a more likely scenario than the wire-speed IO being insufficient, imho.

 

[Roger3006]

My box is has an Intel® Core™ i5- 3450 Processor with 16 gigs of ram. My OS is the 64 bit version of Windows 7. I do not use a memory card. Files are transferred from my camera straight into my computer via USB 3. I am not having problems at this point. I am trying to determine if the larger file size generated by the D800 would be problematic. It takes about eight seconds for my files to load from when I touch the shutter to when they are rendered in Lightroom.

While we are on the topic, can the process be speeded up with any certain graphics card?

Thanks,

Roger

 

[VABuckeye]

While we are on the topic, can the process be speeded up with any certain graphics card?

Upgrade your CPU and motherboard. Use a SSD for the operating system. I believe most reports will tell you that photo editing is CPU intensive.

 

[PaulWog]

While we are on the topic, can the process be speeded up with any certain graphics card?

Upgrade your CPU and motherboard. Use a SSD for the operating system. I believe most reports will tell you that photo editing is CPU intensive.

You do realize that the i5-3450 is a very very very capable processor right? He has *NO* reason to get a new processor. And ABSOLUTELY no reason to get a new motherboard. It really bothers me when someone responds by giving the advice of "please waste your money because I'm providing you with blatant misinformation..."

An SSD can be useful to some. If he gets an SSD, it's not JUST FOR THE OS. He would want his photo editing software and photos also on the SSD. I edit with an SSD, but to be honest it's not the biggest deal... shaves off a tiny bit of time. I'd rather get my money back for it since the time saved isn't really that significant. It would only matter if I was churning out photos constantly as a pro.

To answer the question about the graphics card: Yes, you should have a sufficient graphics card. If your current one is not good, then upgrading your graphics card will indeed help. Certain processing functions use the graphics card more heavily than anything else (if you're using solely Lightroom you could look at exactly what you're going to do and determine how heavily you use your graphics card though... Photoshop CS5/CS6, for example, gets a lot more heavy on the graphics card). Always make sure what power supply you have in your computer (and how much room you have in your computer, physically, to fit the graphics card in) before you get a new graphics card.

 

[robbins.photo]

While we are on the topic, can the process be speeded up with any certain graphics card?

Upgrade your CPU and motherboard. Use a SSD for the operating system. I believe most reports will tell you that photo editing is CPU intensive.

You do realize that the i5-3450 is a very very very capable processor right? He has *NO* reason to get a new processor. And ABSOLUTELY no reason to get a new motherboard. It really bothers me when someone responds by giving the advice of "please waste your money because I'm providing you with blatant misinformation..."

An SSD can be useful to some. If he gets an SSD, it's not JUST FOR THE OS. He would want his photo editing software and photos also on the SSD. I edit with an SSD, but to be honest it's not the biggest deal... shaves off a tiny bit of time. I'd rather get my money back for it since the time saved isn't really that significant. It would only matter if I was churning out photos constantly as a pro.

To answer the question about the graphics card: Yes, you should have a sufficient graphics card. If your current one is not good, then upgrading your graphics card will indeed help. Certain processing functions use the graphics card more heavily than anything else (if you're using solely Lightroom you could look at exactly what you're going to do and determine how heavily you use your graphics card though... Photoshop CS5/CS6, for example, gets a lot more heavy on the graphics card). Always make sure what power supply you have in your computer (and how much room you have in your computer, physically, to fit the graphics card in) before you get a new graphics card.

Good Morning Everyone (depending on were you are),

I sell firearms online. Many of the guns I sell are quiet valuable and are considered functional art. I still must balance speed with quality. I shoot tethered in a studio. Lighting consist of Speed-O-Tron strobes with a variety of Chimera softboxes plus many other things I cannot describe that I rig up.

I was one of the last people to go from film to digital. I used pro equipment in film and am using semi-pro with digital. I have never been sorry that I bought high end and/or professional equipment regardless of what I am doing. I started with a D300 using a D90 for backup. My D90 finally died and I switched to a D7100 as my primary camera and use my D300 for backup. I am a strong believer in prime lenses and good glass.

I shoot tethered straight into Lightroom 5.3. The D7100 did speed me up by allowing me to shoot a little looser and crop more aggressively. Many of my shots never see Photoshop CC; however, some do. Often, it is faster to fix lighting issues in Photoshop rather than spending forever getting my lighting perfect. A firearm has a lot of curves and materials that vary drastically. To say the least, achieving correct exposure, over the entire gun, and eliminating hot shots is more than trying.

I did notice raw files (I shoot everything in RAW) from my D7100 took a little longer to load in Lightroom than my D300. It is still acceptable. My three thousand dollar question is how much longer will it take files from a D800 to load than with my D7100 assuming both are shot in an uncompressed RAW format. Also, relatively speaking, how much longer will it take to open a file in Photoshop CC from Lightroom? In short, is file size problematic with a D800.

I very much appreciate any and all input.

Thank you and y'all (yes I am a Southerner) have a great day,

Roger

It will be based on the slowest component in the system, which in this case will be the speed at which the file transfers via usb. So if you need real world numbers take the number of seconds it takes for the 7100 files to transfer and multiply that by the ratio of how much larger the d800 images would be on average when compared to the 7100

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[BillM]

I believe that indeed was the original question, the transfer time of a 14 bit RAW file from a 12 MP vs 24 MP vs 36 MP cameras. If the D7100 was taking 8 seconds I would think the D300 was taking about 4 seconds and the D800 would be about 12 seconds ?

 

[robbins.photo]

I believe that indeed was the original question, the transfer time of a 14 bit RAW file from a 12 MP vs 24 MP vs 36 MP cameras. If the D7100 was taking 8 seconds I would think the D300 was taking about 4 seconds and the D800 would be about 12 seconds ?

I'd have to look up the difference in file sizes and divide the larger file size by the smaller to get the ratio and then multiply that ratio by the known transfer time, but that sounds about right just off the top of my head.

 

[Mike_E]

Why not look at what you have before you shoot?

ControlMyNikon | Finest Nikon DSLR tethering and Nikon remote control

Then you can see exactly what you have before capture and don't have to wait at all do see your results.

 

[PaulWog]

It will be based on the slowest component in the system, which in this case will be the speed at which the file transfers via usb. So if you need real world numbers take the number of seconds it takes for the 7100 files to transfer and multiply that by the ratio of how much larger the d800 images would be on average when compared to the 7100

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Ah, I got myself too involved with other posts & ended up talking about editing speeds instead of transfer speeds (although, that is just as relevant... but I suppose it wasn't the question).

To get back to answering Roger3006: The amount of transfer time it takes on USB 3.0 (or even 2.0 for that matter) for a series of RAW files from a D800 or D7100 (either one) is insignificant. You are looking at a few minutes here and there when you transfer large amounts of files (ex. 50-100). If you think you'll benefit from the D800, the file transfer difference is absolutely negligible. For someone that it would *really* matter to, they'd probably be looking at a D4 or D4s.

 

[manaheim]

RAW files on the D800 run about 50 meg or so. RAW files on a D7100 are probably, what? 15-17 meg? You're transferring across a pipe so if it's 3x the data, then it's about 3x the time.

That guy that went off about how you don't need new CPU and stuff... yeah... well... I upgraded my entire machine because the one I had before was being crushed by the D800 raw files. The SSD and the new WD Black spinning disk I got are most definitely the biggest contributor to performance improvements in my setup, but there is no question that the CPU upgrade and RAM speed improvement were also a big help. (which also required a faster motherboard...)

Can you work the images on the Corei5? Sure. It'll work fine. You'll just wait a bit between images. Not a HUGE deal unless you're going through hundreds of them, and I can tell you... even on the system I'm running now, going through hundreds of D800 raw images can be pretty annoying.

 

[PaulWog]

RAW files on the D800 run about 50 meg or so. RAW files on a D7100 are probably, what? 15-17 meg? You're transferring across a pipe so if it's 3x the data, then it's about 3x the time.

That guy that went off about how you don't need new CPU and stuff... yeah... well... I upgraded my entire machine because the one I had before was being crushed by the D800 raw files. The SSD and the new WD Black spinning disk I got are most definitely the biggest contributor to performance improvements in my setup, but there is no question that the CPU upgrade and RAM speed improvement were also a big help. (which also required a faster motherboard...)

Can you work the images on the Corei5? Sure. It'll work fine. You'll just wait a bit between images. Not a HUGE deal unless you're going through hundreds of them, and I can tell you... even on the system I'm running now, going through hundreds of D800 raw images can be pretty annoying.

I'm really trying to mitigate the misinformation that the original poster is being provided with here regarding computer hardware... Remember, he is using an i5-3450, not an "i5" (it's not one overarching category).

"i5" is a line of processors by Intel. They tend to be built similarly to their i7 counterparts generation-to-generation, save for not having built-in hyperthreading. There's a bit more to it than that. But the best camera analogy based on you referring to all i5's as i5's is like putting a D80 and a D7100 on the same level because they're both crop sensor cameras. If you refer to benchmarks for the i5-3450 (specifically pertaining to relevant tasks, giving second measurements instead of referring to point-based benchmarks on non-related software), it handles processing in photoshop and lightroom at speeds that are at par with any other equivalent i7 processors. He'd have to spend an arm and a leg to get any worth-while performance increase by upgrading his computer. Essentially, what he has now is a practically brand-new computer with a good, current $200 processor.

Increasing RAM speed also won't make a significant difference. Whether he's running on 1600MHz RAM or 1333MHz RAM, it won't matter. There's actually a bigger difference in the configuration of your RAM (the RAM timings). That gets technical, and again it doesn't really matter all that much. He has 16GB of RAM, and that's more than sufficient and all that really matters in this case. He doesn't even need 16GB of RAM, although it's definitely useful (I run on 8GB and I don't like rebooting my computer all too often, so it gets bogged down & 16GB can be useful with all the applications I run at once).

I occasionally do some part-time professional work contracting out to build computers. I just really don't want people giving out misinformation. Don't refer to every i5 as "an i5". That's incorrect and absolutely misleading.

 

[coastalconn]

I could be wrong, but doesn't the D7100 have a USB 2 port while the D800 has a USB 3 port? I think the OP's bottleneck may actually be in the USB 2 connection.. just a thought before we go building supercomputers