Which photo site/software? And do I get an extra hard drive?

[Dibble]

I'm now the proud owner of a Nikon D50, which came with the 18-55mm standard lens (Mrs Dibble also very kindly bought me the 55-200mm lens). I've got extra SD memory cards, a spre battery, clear skylight filters for both lenses and decent Lowe Alpine bags for the camera and the lenses.

I obviously also have the bundled software (Nikon PictureProject 1.5) that came with the camera, but I haven't loaded it onto the PC yet.

My PC (only) has 80GB, and it's just about full (I'm not sure what with...).

I'm after two recommendations from the PH photographers;

1. What image software would you recommend? I want something that is fairly simple, both to catalogue my photos/create albums etc, but which will also let me edit images, but nothing too major.

2. Is it worth getting an extra external Hard Drive for all my photos?? I saw a 320GB one in Costco today for under £100, which seems pretty cheap to me. I managed to fire off over a thousand photos in two weeks in Canada, and I hate to delete/throw anything away!

[Mad Dave]

In answer to q1:

Get Rawshooter Essentials, if indeed you still can (Adobe recently bought the company). It enables you to shoot RAW and process them very quickly and easily. I can supply you with a copy of it if you can get hold of a serial number (I registered and paid for the upgrade for mine so don't want to give out the serial).

q2: Well if your HDD is full you're going to need to add another - you should be able to add a 'slave' drive internally. I'm no expert but i'd have thought that the external would be slower than an internal? I paid £80 for a 160gb drive about 18 months ago so you should be able to get twice that now for the same price i'd imagine.

Dave

[fergusd]

Frankly, with the cost of hard drives these days I'd buy two . . . use one as your primary and one as a backup drive . . . keep the backup drive seperately from the computer and primary . . . you don't like throwing things away - you'll like losing them even less . . .

Rawshooter has been mentioned, that suggests using RAW, I'd agree and deeply regret having used jpeg for the first 1000 images to took using my D70 . . . there will be those that don't agree, that's their perogative . . . I'd suggest using RAW from the get-go for important images . . .

You'll also need an image manipulation program, GIMP is free, other things cost money, the more you spend the more toys you get . . . YMMV . . .

Fd

[UKBob]

Congrats on the new purchase

[beano500]

"Go forth and muliply your clickiness..."

(As the Pope would have said on the way into Turkey, without that mention of all those other "positions"! )

[Dibble]

OK, Doofus question...

Why shoot in RAW (I guess it's higher quality than "FINE" JPEG) ... but what advantages in the real world do I get?

[UKBob]

Dibble said:

OK, Doofus question...

Why shoot in RAW (I guess it's higher quality than "FINE" JPEG) ... but what advantages in the real world do I get?

I have a rough idea, but i cant remember all the finer points.

If anyone wants to answer this question (again, I know, sorry) at legnth and in detail, that would be great

Edited by UKBob on Monday 18th September 08:46

[Mad Dave]

Its FAR higher quality to start with, but crucially you can fine tune your exposure, white balance and other settings on screen - it really is the 'digital negative'. With JPEG what you shot is what you're stuck with.

[Mad Dave]

Examples -

D200 RAW (compressed) 100% crop:


JPEG Fine:

[Mad Dave]

It's not a very good example actually, but you can see that the RAW is larger and crisper.


Ah, sod it - JUST SHOOT RAW.

[_dobbo_]

fergusd said:

deeply regret having used jpeg for the first 1000 images to took using my D70

I'd echo this.