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Author Topic: Nikon D800 File Size  (Read 8901 times)

HSakols

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Nikon D800 File Size
« on: June 15, 2012, 02:41:10 pm »

Hi,
It appears that many are concerned about the size of D800 files and having enough of a processor to work with their images.  From someone who used to scan medium format film this seems not to be much of an issue.  Granted some of my film files would take a while to make changes to, especially those that approached 1 GB after photoshop. Are folks feeling the drain of larger files in lightroom and photoshop? I'm ashamed to say that I only have 3 Gigs of RAM in my 2007 imac.
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Moreno Polloni

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2012, 05:01:08 pm »

The file size isn't too much of an issue for most people given the low cost of hard drive space and flash cards.

In going from a D300 to a D800, on my system I've found working in Photoshop a bit slower but not unbearably so. LightRoom though is another story and much more demanding of computer resources. If you're a heavy LightRoom user you'll want to do some system upgrades sooner rather than later.
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HSakols

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2012, 07:40:00 pm »

Would you base this just on my amount of RAM?
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Moreno Polloni

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2012, 08:54:40 pm »

Yeah, I'd say 3gb is on the low side. With D800 sized files it's likely to be a bit of a bottleneck. You just have to try it and see. You'll probably be ok with most operations but once in a while you may get an out-of-memory error message.

If your imac is limited to 4gb total (with two SO-DIMM slots) that means you have 1gb and 2gb DIMMs installed. For the $15-$20 cost of a third party 2gb SO-DIMM it'd still be worth pulling out the 1gb piece and replacing it with a 2gb one. It's only an incremental increase but every little bit helps.

Long term though you'll probably want to upgrade your system. I came to that realization after just a few minutes in LR4. My current system is fine running Photoshop but D800 files in LR4 slow it down enough that it becomes a major productivity issue.
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Mike Guilbault

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2012, 10:44:21 pm »

My MacPro (dual core 2.8) was running with 4Gb of RAM and worked adequately.  Even with my D700 files though, I often had to close down some apps and run with only LR and PS. This happened after upgrading to LR4.  So I upgraded another 16GB to 20GB in total and everything runs great, even the D800 files.
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Mike Guilbault

HSakols

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2012, 12:04:53 am »

Yes I will upgrade to 4 GB and yes I find that I have to make sure that I only have photoshop and lightroom open - oh and itunes. 
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luxborealis

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2012, 09:23:00 am »

When users say "lightroom has slowed down" with D800 files, they really should to be more clear about what is slowing down...
  • preview generation (zooming in to 100%) in Library or Develop?
  • lag time with making value adjustments?
  • lag time with spot removal, graduated masks or adjustment brushes?
  • generating output (e.g. Export to jpeg) or
  • all of the above.

I am running LR4.1 on a MacBook Pro (mid-2011) 2 GH Intel Core i7 with 8GB of ram. I have noticed a few "slow down" issues with zooming to 100%, spot removal and Export. Upon import I do not have 100% previews automatically generated for ever image. So, when zooming in, I must wait for the Preview to be generated - that takes a second or two. Spot removal takes a second or two, but is not (at this point anyway) annoying. Exporting to jpeg takes notably longer.

Note: Mike Guilbault mentions about closing down other apps while working with D800 files - an excellent idea! Also, I found the article on Optimizing Lightroom on Adobe.com very helpful: http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html In particular, setting the Camera Raw Cache settings to 20GB or more.

I've gone from 12.5MP raw images to 40 to 50MP raw images, yet the speed hit is not really an issue. But, then again, perhaps I am just trying to convince myself that I really don't need to spend another $2000 after having just spent $3300 on a D800e.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2012, 10:08:50 am by luxborealis »
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Terry McDonald - luxBorealis.com

Moreno Polloni

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #7 on: June 17, 2012, 10:53:17 pm »

It's become obvious that anyone running less than 4gb with a 32 bit OS is not going to have a good experience with LR4.1 and large raw files. It doesn't really matter about the specifics as most operations in LR will be slow. The more adjustments you do to an image file the slower the system becomes.

Turning off the second monitor, increasing the cache, etc., all help a bit but they won't make an overly dramatic difference. The bottom line is that in order to run LR efficiently with D800-sized raw files a newer system (ie. within the last 3 CPU generations) with 8gb or more ram and a 64 bit OS would be the minimum required for a Lightroom production system.
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Moreno Polloni

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #8 on: June 17, 2012, 11:03:03 pm »

My MacPro (dual core 2.8) was running with 4Gb of RAM and worked adequately.  Even with my D700 files though, I often had to close down some apps and run with only LR and PS. This happened after upgrading to LR4.  So I upgraded another 16GB to 20GB in total and everything runs great, even the D800 files.

That makes sense. There is a certain minimum amount of ram required. If you don't have that, regardless of CPU speeds, there will be be problems with operations that require more ram than is available onboard. If you have plenty of ram (by which I mean more than 8gb and running a 64 bit OS) but an older CPU, everything will still run, it'll just take longer. 
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arlon

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Re: Nikon D800 File Size
« Reply #9 on: June 19, 2012, 09:01:34 am »

I did jump up the ram on my Imac to 12gb. Additional ram was quite cheap and an easy 3 minute DIY job. Big improvement in processing of everything I've played with from the D800 files on (PS, Photomatix, AutoPano Pro, Lightroom 4, etc..).  The additional RAM was probably the cheapest thing I've had to do for the D800E so far.
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