Topic: new macbookpro 17" and tethered shooting (Read 9749 times)

woof75 · « **Reply #20 on:** April 09, 2009, 04:00:22 am »

So what are these mac juice battery's or whatever you call them, just did a quick google and couldn't find them?

BJNY · « **Reply #21 on:** April 10, 2009, 11:55:02 am »

If this is the Apple Juicz , then no thanks :

http://www.quickertek.com/products/apple_juicz.php

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #22 on:** April 15, 2009, 03:53:04 am »

It's not the solar panel, but the accu pack.
I would also not want to drag arround a solar panel

The MBP arrived yesterday, screen looks gorgous and the 1920x1200 resolution is exactly what I needed.
One thing that really stood out is the firewire800 connector, on the 15" MBP it's not a tight fit, some of the time it would come loose and I would loose connection to my harddrive so I was afraid for the tethered shooting, but on the 17" MBP the connector is rocksolid, it really clicked.

Overal my first impressions are very positive (still have to work with it), but what was Apple thinking with the black keyboard ??

woof75 · « **Reply #23 on:** April 15, 2009, 04:41:40 am »

Quote from: Frank Doorhof

It's not the solar panel, but the accu pack.
I would also not want to drag arround a solar panel

The MBP arrived yesterday, screen looks gorgous and the 1920x1200 resolution is exactly what I needed.
One thing that really stood out is the firewire800 connector, on the 15" MBP it's not a tight fit, some of the time it would come loose and I would loose connection to my harddrive so I was afraid for the tethered shooting, but on the 17" MBP the connector is rocksolid, it really clicked.

Overal my first impressions are very positive (still have to work with it), but what was Apple thinking with the black keyboard ??

So how about that screen, have you calibrated it? Do you think it's good enough for colour critical work? Can I leave my eizo at home.

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #24 on:** April 15, 2009, 05:37:39 am »

Don't know yet, it came in yesterday and I was home late so I just installed the laptop.
Will start working with it tomorrow and friday in the first photoshoot, will report back then.

It depends on what you do on location of course, if you do colorcritical work I would probarbly not use the notebook.
I think the screen from the very quick glance I had last night is good enough for normal work on location and editing for most work.

But again if it really counts I would trust my studio monitor, but than again most monitors used for that work are equal the MBP in cost.

Guy Mancuso · « **Reply #25 on:** April 15, 2009, 09:11:09 am »

My 15 inch screen looks good but I would still shoot a WB shoot tethered and go that route for the shoot just to be on the safe side. I just ordered a new 400 to 800 cable from CI so i will check it out also when that comes in. Frank it will take 8gbs of Ram and i actually put in two SSD drives running Raid 0 with Intel XM 25 80gb drives .Very nice little setup, not cheap though. I'm hooked up to my 30 inch display and that did calibrate very nicely.

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #26 on:** April 15, 2009, 11:43:15 am »

Hi,
The whitebalance card is a nobrainer of course
We always do that.

I'm waiting for the 4GB modules to come down a bit in price, my wife owns a PC/MAC store so she keeps an eye out for me.
For the moment the 4GB will do just fine, I'm using the MBP only in the studio for shooting and on location of course.

For the photoshop and video work I'm using a macpro 8 core with 12 GB that flies.

JeffVo · « **Reply #27 on:** April 15, 2009, 12:15:57 pm »

Quote from: Guy Mancuso

.... i actually put in two SSD drives running Raid 0 with Intel XM 25 80gb drives .Very nice little setup, not cheap though. I'm hooked up to my 30 inch display and that did calibrate very nicely.

Guy, I've been thinking of going the SSD route. Any issues? Any worry of Raid 0 failing? How much speedier is it? For example, does it process files any faster? When teethered do the images load in any faster? When browsing to a new folder do thumbnails load faster, and so forth.

Guy Mancuso · « **Reply #28 on:** April 15, 2009, 01:12:01 pm »

Quote from: JeffVo

Guy, I've been thinking of going the SSD route. Any issues? Any worry of Raid 0 failing? How much speedier is it? For example, does it process files any faster? When teethered do the images load in any faster? When browsing to a new folder do thumbnails load faster, and so forth.

Great questions . Let me give you some thoughts on this. No issues with the Raid 0 and the SSD drives. I have the Intel XM -25 80gbs and than in the optical bay i used the bracket from maxupgrades for the second drive and pretty easy to install http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cf...FTOKEN=10088962 . I would have loved to get the E class drives but there 700 each. Ouch but I am running extremely fast here and as always have a backup OS system on a external and I also have a OS backup on a Firewire 800 LaCie Rugged drive that i always take with me on the road . So there is a backup always around. I actually took out the 7200 drive that came with the laptop made two partitions one for OS backup and one for road storage than put that in the Lacie. Also let me state too that you CAN put 8gb of Ram in the 15 inch 2.66 or 2.93 models only. Worth that upgrade right there. Now as far as speed this all depends on the program. In CS4 with this setup I am actually beating my old MacPro 2.66 667 12gb of Ram and 10 k drives, and the reason for this is CS4 is not core hungry and only runs on a single core. So in this case lR and ACR would be great programs on the laptop running like this. Now C1 which i use is more core hungry than ram hungry and this is where I have actually slowed down from the desktop. C1 does like more cores but also likes Ram and drive speed but I am not that much slower by the truck load. Basically 10 P45 files processed full res is a minute slower than the MacPro was. Considering this is a laptop that is damn good. Now the new 8 core MacPros will smoke me by 2 minutes. So with any laptop we are limited too two cores and core hungry programs will run slower. I actually sold my MacPro and went this route because i wanted something much more road worthy and still able to process quickly. No regrets yes it is a little slower here but I can work in the office and on the road. At this point the only way to actually speed this up more and i am flying here is to actually go with the E class SSD which the issue is with SSD the reads are amazingly fast . CS4 loads in less than 3 seconds but that is somewhat meaningless in real world work. Anyway it is the writes that you have to watch and they are by a single SSD slower than a 7200 drive with the Raid 0 that increases but with the E class SSD i think i could even get faster in C1 since the box itself has big improvements alone with 2.93 1056 mhz a bigger L2 cache and better DDR 3 ram so all that stuff combined makes the system pretty darn quick. Than add the SSD and your off to the races butwith those limits i mentioned. So in real world it will depend a lot on the programs you are running. For Raw processing the one program like C1 will take the most hit because even Aperture is Ram hungry and not as much core hungry. So it will come down to programs other than that the system flies. Now we should remember I am speaking from a Photographers point of view and we all know of the heavy demands we place on speed of workflow. Even with C1 i go usually one image at a time and setting up the next image during the processing time going in the background so depending how you work on the fly like this maybe not such a big issue. But if you save everything in batch than at the end hit 200 images to process in batch at the end than obviously you will wait for them to process longer than you would a MacPro. Now i will say this smokes my old 2.4 667 mhz 6gb ram 2006 model so as a laptop it is a big improvement with the SSD. Tethered i have not tried yet waiting for the new Firewire cord but I will assume yes no question because it has extremely fast reads. That I will report on when that test comes in. Hope that helps but the SSD are really nice , just expensive as heck right now.

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #29 on:** April 15, 2009, 01:34:20 pm »

Decided to do a quick calibration on the MBP17"
Grayscale tracking is fair for a notebook but not perfect, on the higher IRE patterns red and blue are too hot but it's better than the MBP15".

Looking at some pictures I know very well I can say that the screen is very nice and good enough for on the road editing.
With the old MBP I did not do that because the colors were always a little funky in the skintones the MBP17" seems to be improved there.

I can't do a colorspace measurement under MACOS because my calibration software I use for the ISF calibrations runs under windows, I will do a quick measurement under windows tomorrow with a spectrum radio meter to see what the colorspace under windows does (probarbly the same as under MacOS).
I will try to upload the raw data tomorrow if you are interested.

doncody · « **Reply #30 on:** April 15, 2009, 02:03:53 pm »

Quote from: Frank Doorhof

Decided to do a quick calibration on the MBP17"
Grayscale tracking is fair for a notebook but not perfect, on the higher IRE patterns red and blue are too hot but it's better than the MBP15".

Looking at some pictures I know very well I can say that the screen is very nice and good enough for on the road editing.
With the old MBP I did not do that because the colors were always a little funky in the skintones the MBP17" seems to be improved there.

I can't do a colorspace measurement under MACOS because my calibration software I use for the ISF calibrations runs under windows, I will do a quick measurement under windows tomorrow with a spectrum radio meter to see what the colorspace under windows does (probarbly the same as under MacOS).
I will try to upload the raw data tomorrow if you are interested.

Frank,

I have the previous generation MPB 17 with an H2 and a Leaf 75. No problems tethered

Don

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #31 on:** April 16, 2009, 07:49:39 am »

I posted some measurements on my blog for those interested in seeing what the color/grayscale tracking does on the new 17" MBP
Share the link with others who are interested.

http://www.doorhof.nl/blog/index.php?topic=2434.0

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #32 on:** April 18, 2009, 02:43:23 pm »

Updated the review with measurements comparing aRGB to the MBP.

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #33 on:** April 24, 2009, 01:44:39 pm »

Today I tested the time I can shoot with the Leaf Aptus22 connected to the MBP on battery power alone.
One hour was without a problem, after app 70 minutes sometimes a corrupted image came in, after app 80 minutes it was three good one corrupted, three good, one corrupted etc.

So at this moment the real shooting time is app 70 minutes on battery power with the Leaf Aptus 22.

Not so bad but not good, especially because my battery still was for 55% full, would love to be able to shoot till it's really empty, but possibly the power on the firewire connector drops after that time.

Best solution for location work without power would be to shoot on the card and empty the card in between sessions.
With a firewire 800 card reader that is a relative quick process to I think for most people it's a good option (or shoot with a Canon tethered with it's own power).

After the workshops in Hertfordshire I hope to bring the Applejuisz with me that claims to run the laptop 5-6 hours before it goes over to it's own accu pack.
That would mean that I can shoot 6 hours in a worst case scenario which sounds very tempting.

Will update the review on my blog and make a new review there when I bring the applejuicz with me.

Full review on www.doorhof.nl/blog under reviews.

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #34 on:** April 24, 2009, 03:12:29 pm »

Hi,
I have to add that I'm on my fourth cycle, with my MBP15" after a week or three the accu was on it's normal behaviour.
I'm still not getting the 8 hours claimed worktime, it tops out at maybe 6 hours, but when it was new it was on 4 hours so were getting there

I will repeat the test in a week or two.
I have to add that while we were shooting tethered internet radio was playing and the USB ports were in use for a keyboard and mouse plus the miniport was driving a LCD.
I don't know if it takes a lot of power but I guess everything combined will drain the battery more than running the laptop dedicated.

The files do come in by the way after 80 minutes but the artifacts are horizontal lines, first in the half of the frame, later 3 or 4 and when I stopped testing it were dozens of them with every now and than a good shot, when I connected the power it work flawless again.

I'm a bit dissapointed indeed, to be safe I could work for maybe an hour.
I will also test with the monitor on half (it was now on 75%) that should also help.

Carsten W · « **Reply #35 on:** April 24, 2009, 03:51:35 pm »

Quote from: Frank Doorhof

Hi,
I have to add that I'm on my fourth cycle, with my MBP15" after a week or three the accu was on it's normal behaviour.
I'm still not getting the 8 hours claimed worktime, it tops out at maybe 6 hours, but when it was new it was on 4 hours so were getting there

I think that only the MBP 17" has 8 hours of battery life. The 15" (which I also have) gets around 5 with wireless active. I haven't tried yet without, but 6 seems plausible.

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #36 on:** April 24, 2009, 03:59:38 pm »

Hi,
I'm using the 17"MBP2009 my previous laptop was the MBP15june2008 model.
By the way good tip on the wireless that's also on, will disconnect that one also (totally forgot).

Will test it solo in the coming weeks with everything off.

Carsten W · « **Reply #37 on:** April 24, 2009, 04:16:12 pm »

Quote from: Frank Doorhof

Hi,
I'm using the 17"MBP2009 my previous laptop was the MBP15june2008 model.
By the way good tip on the wireless that's also on, will disconnect that one also (totally forgot).

Will test it solo in the coming weeks with everything off.

Ah, I read your sentence wrong then. Don't forget Bluetooth and don't make the screen any brighter than necessary!

Frank Doorhof · « **Reply #38 on:** April 25, 2009, 02:31:56 am »

noted bluetooth also
Will check everything and do the test again.

Esben · « **Reply #39 on:** April 25, 2009, 10:36:16 am »

I have a couple of the QuickerTek MacBook Pro batteries as well as the new MacBook Pro 17" 2.93GHz.

I do digital capture with the Leaf Aptus 75 and Aptus 54S. I'm not using the 17" on-location for capturing; I use the 15" instead.
The 15" will last for about half a day of computer work and for 400-500 frames with the Leaf Aptus.
For a full day I need two batteries.

About the colorgamut:

I did a quick comparison between the new 17" 2.93GHz anti-glare vs. the early 2008 MacBook Pro 15" matted screen.
The grid represents the colorgamut of the 17" and the solid is the colorgamut of the 15".

Enjoy!

Best,
Esben

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Author Topic: new macbookpro 17" and tethered shooting (Read 9749 times)