Apple 27" iMac: The Best Computer for Photographers

View fullsize

A few weeks ago I wrote about my plans to order a new 27" iMac. You can read all of those details here. But a few things have changed since that post and I want to update you on what I've found. 

First of all, it's official, I've ordered my iMac. But it's a bit different than I originally imagined. Here are the changes:

1. Go with Fusion: You can see in my original post that I ignored the Fusion drive because I felt like it was only relevant for a general consumer who wanted a little SSD (Solid State Drive) on top of raw storage. Turns out I was wrong. It has broader appeal which I'll explain in the next paragraph. I went with the 1TB Fusion drive instead of the 3TB. My bulk storage will still reside on the external Drobo 5D which is filled with 20TB's of drive space so there's zero reason for me to spring for a 3TB Fusion drive.

2. Speedy: I originally thought the Fusion drive would suffer speed problems compared to a straight solid state drive. In fact my discussions with Apple told me as much. But the benchmark tests are out and the difference between the Fusion and a SSD is negligible. For my photography workflow I won't notice any drop at all and in some areas it's faster. The Fusion drive is a genius piece of hardware because you really do get all of the benefits of a full SSD drive without the cost. 

3. The Cost Savings: Apple is only offering a 768GB solid state drive configuration in the 27" iMac. I didn't know that at the time. I assumed they'd offer up a variety of options, perhaps starting at 256GB. The cost is significant for the 768GB configuration, a whopping $1,300 more than the 1TB Fusion drive. No thanks. After reading all the benchmark tests the decision was an easy one for me.

4. Extra RAM: I didn't mention it at the time but decided to spring for the extra RAM. You can grab 8, 16, or 32GB of RAM. With the savings on the SSD I decided to go for the big boy and grab the 32GB of RAM. This will let me run a whole slew of apps with speed and efficiency. 

In the end here is my configuration:

• Processor: 3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
• Memory: 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x8GB
• Storage: 1TB Fusion Drive + external Drobo 5D expandable up to 20TB
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5

I'm convinced this is the best possible configuration for photographers.

Photo of the Day: An Early Christmas

I decided to pull out my Canon D Mark II while on our trip to my folks' house for an early Christmas. There's just something special about this camera with a 50mm lens attached. And the warmth of the holiday's and lights that go with it.

I decided to practice shooting in total manual mode so I had a whole slew of dark, underexposed, blurry shots as I adjusted settings. I'm convinced that shooting in manual mode has really helped me learn settings I'd normally take for granted.

In this shot I notice that there's some blur because I had the depth of field set too shallowly. My dad and son were reading a Christmas book together and my dad is perfectly focused while the book and my son are slightly blurred. So next time increase the focal depth.

Photo of the Day: Frost on the Lake

I hadn't even turned on the coffee pot yet but I decided to head down to the lake on this frosty morning. The water has receded below the area where there would usually be lake water. On this frosty morning I found uncovered ground frozen over by a mid-December freeze. I took three exposures on my Sony NEX-7.

View fullsize

Frost on the Lake

Photo of the Day: My Baby Girl at 7-Months Old

Every month my wife has me set-up for a photo shoot of our newborn baby girl. I used to laugh at the idea. Really? We're going to shoot every month's birthday? But I got over that pretty soon when I realized she wasn't kidding. 

I also began to see this as an opportunity to improve my portrait photography skills. Yesterday I shot a new round of photos. I started out using my Nikon D800 but quickly switched back to my older Canon D Mark II with a 50 prime lens. That lens is stunning and I simply don't have an equivalent lens for the D800. I dropped the depth of field to a razor thin margin so that I would get her eyes as sharp as possible while softening out the rest of her face. I did that on a few photos and others I opened up a deeper depth of field. 

View fullsize

My daughter at 7 months

Photosmith for iOS: Using the iPad with Lightroom

I've recently been in a number of situations where I wanted to look at my just-shot RAW photos but didn't want sit up in my office at a desk all night. I just wanted to sit on the couch with my iPad and have some impact on my overall photography workflow.

View fullsize

Enter Photosmith. This is the iOS app I'd been looking for.

I look at it as a way to sit on the couch, import a bunch of RAW photos to my iPad and do some Lightroom work without using Lightroom just yet. Don't get me wrong, I like Lightroom, but nothing beats an iPad for being able to hold the photos you took in your hands. 

Photosmith syncs with Lightroom using a simple plugin, so all the metadata I add to the photos in Photosmith winds up in my permanent Lightroom library.

As an example, tonight I took 60 photos of my daughter. I imported the RAW files to my iPad and used Photosmith to create a collection, star the photos I wanted to edit eventually, and added some creative commons metadata.  Then I opened Lightroom on my Mac and hit the sync button. Because both my iPad and Mac are on the same network the photos started showing up in my Lightroon library with all the metadata intact. Sweet!

The workflow looks like this:

   1. Take pictures

  2. Plug in Camera Connection Kit, and allow the built-in Photos App to start

  3. Import the photos from the camera or card

  4. Start Photosmith

  5. Do your tagging 

  6. Sync to Lightoom, start Lightroom, run the plugin, and import directly from Photosmith

  7. The images and all the settings are transferred over WiFi and added directly into your catalog

I'm planning an amazing trip to New Zealand in the coming months and Photosmith may become an important tool for my return flight. At 30,000 feet it'll be wonderful going through hundreds of photos on an iPad's touchscreen. When I get home I'll be ready to edit and process the photos I've already picked. 

Photo of the Day: Kids in Motion Tend to Stay in Motion

I took a series of photos during my nephew's baptism backyard party. I was really focused on learning the effects of shutter speed. Remember I founded this blog because of my son's 2nd birthday party photo fail. I wrote more about that here. My son's party was entirely out of focus. I never understood how to switch shutter speed. 

In the days before my nephew's party I vowed I wouldn't have a repeat performance. I'm mostly happy with how they turned out. Here's a young boy in mid-swing going for that piñata.

View fullsize

Swinging for the candy.