How much memory for photos?

Hi,

I am thinking of buying an imac. I will only be using it for photography, not music or films. Is the 500Giga option going to enough space or is it wiser to go for 1T?
I know it's a dumb question as I can do the math (3-4MB per photo ie how many etc) but I was just wondering what people's opinion is.

Also second question, do I need to do anything special (and difficult) to get my existing photos on my pc over to the imac or is it just a case of plug n play?

Thanks for any advice.

alexander_m said:

Hi,

I am thinking of buying an imac. I will only be using it for photography, not music or films. Is the 500Giga option going to enough space or is it wiser to go for 1T?
I know it's a dumb question as I can do the math (3-4MB per photo ie how many etc) but I was just wondering what people's opinion is.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't sweat the hard drive size too much. 500GB should be fine for your purposes (at least for awhile). If you need more storage, you can always add an external hard drive.

Also second question, do I need to do anything special (and difficult) to get my existing photos on my pc over to the imac or is it just a case of plug n play?

Thanks for any advice.

Click to expand...

Well, there are quite a few ways to do this... you can share out your photos directory on your PC and transfer them across the network. Or, you could copy all of your photos onto an external hard disk (great for backups!) and then connect that external to the new Mac and copy them into iPhoto/Aperture. Or, if you bring your old PC to the Apple Store when you're buying your Mac, they can transfer all of the data over for you.

It's not at all difficult and if you have any trouble, we can always help out here.

Thanks cwa107,

I don't change computers every couple of years so didn't want to find out in a year or so that the memory wasn't enough.

Also thought that transferring the photos (jpg) would be complicated...
thanks again.

alexander_m said:

I don't change computers every couple of years so didn't want to find out in a year or so that the memory wasn't enough.

Click to expand...

FYI (terminology):

- "memory" = ram
- storage space = hard drive, SSD drive

As far as "storage space"/hard drive space for photos/photography. If you're a very active person/photographer...you're probably always going to run out of storage space.

So once you have exceeded the internal hard drive's storage space...you're probably going to want to purchase an external hard drive or hard drives for additional storage. You're also going to want an external hard drive for backup purposes as well...because it would certainly stink to have 100's or 1000's of photos be lost if the computers internal hard drive were to suddenly crash!

- Nick

Cheers Nick!

I have an iMac 27" with 1 TB hdd, setup mainly for photography. I use the internal drive only for the OS and applications, plus whatever data needs to be accessible as fast as possible. All data is stored on an external disk (2 TB FireWire 800).

So basically my internal hdd space is being used for a small percentage only; I plan to replace the internal HDD with a Solid State Disk, when they become cheaper and more reliable then today.

The external disk runs at about 50% of the read/write speed of the internal one , which is still fast enough for loading/saving files into Photoshop. I use LightRoom for viewing/basic editing, and have the catalog + preview database stored on the internal disk for faster access, but to be honest, I see no practical difference in speed if they are on the external disk as well.

My external HDD is a FireWire 800 one, which was within my budget; if you have plenty of money and no patience, get a Thunderbolt external disk. If you have little money, and have a laid-back attitude when it comes to computer-use.... get a USB 2 external disk. Just for reference: a 3 MB file will be retrieved/stored in about 0.25 seconds on my internal drive, about 0.5 second on the FW800 and about 1 second on the USB disk...

I maxed out my system with 16 GB RAM, but I am sure that 8 GB will be more then enough for most uses. But RAM (not from the Apple store!!) is cheap, so I just put in as much as possible.

Thymen

Thanks for the advice Thymen!

alexander_m said:

Hi,

I am thinking of buying an imac. I will only be using it for photography, not music or films. Is the 500Giga option going to enough space or is it wiser to go for 1T?
I know it's a dumb question as I can do the math (3-4MB per photo ie how many etc) but I was just wondering what people's opinion is.

Also second question, do I need to do anything special (and difficult) to get my existing photos on my pc over to the imac or is it just a case of plug n play?

Thanks for any advice.

Click to expand...

I think you will need 1T memory because if you go for HD quality then it will require more space as compared to low quality pictures and movies.

Listen to Thymen, good advice there. I also do the same exact thing. The good thing about keeping your data on an external is that it makes you aware of the fact that you should keep redundant external backups of your stuff. People who fill their internal HDD's tend to be lazy about backing up and also suffer the ill-fate that is the spinning beach balls due to lack of space.

Keep your internal HDD as free'd up as possible, and it will sing for a long time. Remember, a lot of what we do with multimedia these days, requires a lot of pre-caching to the internal disk. You can't pre cache if the disk is full!

Therefore, if you have a desktop.. it would behoove one to use an SSD for their OS and installed applications, and use a regular 1TB HDD for pre caching and data.

Doug

Actually, I have 2 external disks for the OSX environment: one 2TB FW800 for data, and a 2 TB USB 2.0 for Time Machine. For the Windows environment, I have a HomeServer with 4 disks, 3 for data, one (larger one) for backups, and another external USB disk for backups too. The latter is switched on only when making backups, and after checking for viruses etc.

Very rarely I need to access the backed-up data, but I do not wish to loose 10 years of digital photos, or 15 years of (my wife's) office data. Better safe then sorry.

Thymen

alexander_m said:

Hi,

I am thinking of buying an imac. I will only be using it for photography, not music or films. Is the 500Giga option going to enough space or is it wiser to go for 1T?
I know it's a dumb question as I can do the math (3-4MB per photo ie how many etc) but I was just wondering what people's opinion is.

Also second question, do I need to do anything special (and difficult) to get my existing photos on my pc over to the imac or is it just a case of plug n play?

Thanks for any advice.

Click to expand...

I'm an avid photographer using a D800 Nikon that creates 50 Gig RAW files. I have thousands of photos on my iMac that has a lowly 500 Gig HD. I checked this morning and still have 365 Gig free & available. You'd be better off buying a passport external 1T drive for backing up your work. I bought my 1T drive and use Apple's Time Machine to backup everything every 15 minutes. The drive cost me $89 at Costco.

As far as file transfer you can use flash drive or set up a wi-fi shared file/folder between your PC & iMac. The later is free. It's Alive!

I'm thinking that a 34mp camera should produce around a 75MB filesize in a NEF format, assuming my math is correct this morning.

Dysfunction said:

I'm thinking that a 34mp camera should produce around a 75MB filesize in a NEF format, assuming my math is correct this morning.

Click to expand...

The Nikon D800 has a 36.3 MP sensor putting out 50 MB on some RAW files. It varies.