D800 RAW converter - lightroom 4?

pooley

pooley

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Mike
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Hi,

I'm considering buying a D800 at the moment, but am a little concerned about my computer - its not the latest and greatest by any stretch of the imagination.

I have an i3 processor with just 4gb of RAM with lightroom 3 installed.

So, 2 questions, firstly am I best updating to lightroom 4 to process RAW files? I'm not into photoshop, I just do basic processing, or is there another option of a similar ability? I'm on a PC, not mac.

Secondly, is there any low cost option available to noticably speed up my computer? If I do go for the D800 there won't be much budget left for updating my computer.

As you have probably guessed I'm not particularly computer minded so please don't get too techy with your answers!

Mike
 
Mike,

I asked a similar question on the D800 owners thread. I have a similar spec laptop to your machine, and 'boyfalldown' kindly let me have a RAW file to have a play with.

I have managed to open it in Picassa without any difficulties. Doing a massive crop has taken it a while to process, but other than that simple adjustment have worked no slower than file from my D80

I'm just downloading the adobe DNG convertor to see if I can edit the file in Photoshop CS3
 
As you probably know, LR3 won't read D800 raws. So if you want to use LR you'll need v4. Unfortunately LR4 seems to run at random speeds - many people find it nice and quick. Others with more powerful machines find it much slower.

Best option would be to download the trial of LR4 and some D800 raws (there must be some on the web) and try it.

Obvious alternatives are Capture 1 and Capture NX2. Neither are terribly cheap - both have trials.

Biggest bang for buck computer u/g for Lightroom would probably be to add an SSD and run from that - some good articles on the web for what to put where.

Or buy a D600 ;)
 
You can keep using LR3 and just use the free Adobe DNG convertor to convert your raws so that they can be processed using LR3.

Then you can decide if it is worth upgrading to LR4 for what you need

Windows

Macintosh
 
Though DNG converting is an option, the new processing engine of LR4 has been getting good reviews. I haven't used LR4 enough to get my head around the changes to say whether it's a big improvement. :shrug: I am so used to the old ACR6/LR3 (and earlier) tools that it will take awhile to get into the groove. :thinking:
 
Even though I had it anyway, NX2 came free with my D800E.

Does it not come free with the 800? Regardless, that's what I'd be using as my NEF converter if you did go ahead with the purchase. :)
 
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