Serious problem with D70 software...

[Mad Dave]

Hi All,

Ive just got a D70 and have taken a fair few shots, but I have a major issue with the software bundle - my 800mhz Athlon PC is REALLY struggling to process .NEF files - my parents 1.3Ghz PC with 256mb RAM is struggling too, although not so badly. Just viewing/opening/zooming in to images is very very slow - so slow that after a couple of shots I give in and wander off. My expensive graphics computer at work has trouble too, though not to such a degree.

The light at the end of the tunnel though is that once the image is in Photoshop (again, quite slow), it zooms in and does everything quite quickly, so i'm hoping its mainly a software issue?

Does anyone have any faster software they could point me in the direction of, or tell me what bits are most important to upgrade in my PC to get a decent speed, otherwise i'm afraid the D70 may have to go - whats the use of taking great shots if I can't do anything with them?!

Cheers

Dave.

[falcemob]

I have problems with my PC and .NEF files also RAW. I have 2.4 pentium something or other and 256 megs of ram. With anything bigger than .jpgs it slows to a stop and then freezes. Even with a few jpgs open things start to slow considerably

[Don]

Sounds like your PCs are memory starved. My 2Ghz PC was finding it impossible to do stuff with big images. Upgrade from 256Mb to 768MB - hey presto - problems went away.

If you can afford £1000++ for a D70 (with bits) you can do a hundred and fifty quid on RAM, surely?

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

256mb ram?

That's your biggest problem. 512mb minimum but 1gb really needed.

[simpo two]

It's just a temporary bottleneck...

If RAW files are killing your PC, then until you get a beefed up one, just shoot JPG Large Fine. Trust me, your images will not look like lego!

[rico]

simpo two said:

If RAW files are killing your PC, then until you get a beefed up one, just shoot JPG Large Fine. Trust me, your images will not look like lego!

I'm shooting medium JPGs at the moment as i've only got a 256mb card (for the time being ) and my neice is being a supermodel and posing constantly (she's 11months guys!) and my family are stunned by the quality of the images.
I'm bracing myself for shooting my first RAW image!
Gawd i love this camera

[Mad Dave]

Ive tried shooting in JPEG Fine and also RAW and theres a huge difference between the two! I really don't want to have to shoot in JPEG mode, I guess i'll have to get more RAM! Is a decent graphics card required or shall I just get the RAM?

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

Just RAM will probably be fine.

[simpo two]

So 'serious problem with the D70 software' actually means 'serious probem with Dave's Pooter then...

[chrisjl]

Mad Dave said:

Is a decent graphics card required?

The graphics card is close to irrelevant. A high-res, high colour depth display is going to need less than 8MB to store, but double-buffered, so call it 16MB. I'd be amazed if you've got that or less.

These 64/128/256MB graphics cards that are around now are ALL about 3D performance. The huge quantity of memory is for storing textures, and wouldn't take part in a RAW->TIFF conversion.

While it is perfectly feasible that the power of a 3D GPU could be used (very effectively) for more image processing work, I'm not aware of anyone that's doing it (yet). 'Core Image' in OSX Tiger is going to offload a lot of graphics work to the GPU, leaving the CPU to look after other things.

[Mad Dave]

simpo two said:

So 'serious problem with the D70 software' actually means 'serious probem with Dave's Pooter then...

Well it doesn't seem terribly efficient - port the image over to Photoshop on my works machine and its fine - the same image in PictureProject is very slow, so I stand by my title

Thanks for the help everybody - I guess i'll have to invest in some more RAM, though my work machine has 1GB of RAM I think...

[simpo two]

Mad Dave said:

Well it doesn't seem terribly efficient - port the image over to Photoshop on my works machine and its fine - the same image in PictureProject is very slow, so I stand by my title

Ah yes, Nikon software (or Canon for that matter I think)is not regarded as highly as, say, PhotoShop: after all, Adobe and others specialise only in software whilst Nikon have to make the odd camera too But the software in your actual *D70* appears to be fine.

I have never installed or used Nikon software for exactly that reason However if you spend £100 on Nikon View that might be better?

[Mad Dave]

simpo two said:

Mad Dave said: Well it doesn't seem terribly efficient - port the image over to Photoshop on my works machine and its fine - the same image in PictureProject is very slow, so I stand by my title Ah yes, Nikon software (or Canon for that matter I think)is not regarded as highly as, say, PhotoShop: after all, Adobe and others specialise only in software whilst Nikon have to make the odd camera too But the software in your actual *D70* appears to be fine. I have never installed or used Nikon software for exactly that reason However if you spend £100 on Nikon View that might be better?

If you've never installed the Nikon software, how do you process the RAW/NEF files? If theres a way that I cna thumbnail browse the images and then open in Photoshop i'll be VERY VERY happy!

[simpo two]

Mad Dave said:

If you've never installed the Nikon software, how do you process the RAW/NEF files?

Photoshop CS + NEF plug-in. I think 7 will do it as well). I can get a thumbnail by right-clicking the image file, thanks to a little prog called PicaView.

Mind you, having experimented with RAW a few times it seemed a lot of work for no noticeable gain, so I stick to JPG Large Fine.

[Mad Dave]

Thanks Simpo. Where can I get this NEF plugin from?

[simpo two]

Mad Dave said:

Thanks Simpo. Where can I get this NEF plugin from?

I think this is the chap:
www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2460

[Mad Dave]

Thanks Simpo, i'll check it out.