Memory used by iview pro 3?

[Yvonne Muller]

Hi you all,

I'm new here.  I've been a photographer for only a few years, a painter much longer.  I've lost control of my huge pile of images and now I'm learning DAM.  I'm looking forward to perusing the DAM forum.  I have one question right now, though.

A friend, a retired electrical engineer, is helping me select a laptop.  He has asked me how much memory I need.  I've figured out how much PSCS & Bridge take, more or less, but haven't an idea about iview media pro 3.  I'm just in the process of learning...I haven't even installed it yet.  Can anyone tell me how much memory to add to my bottom line for iview media pro 3?  Thanks in advance.

Alternately, if anyone would let me know which laptop(s) you've had success with, I'd be very appreciative.  This is clearly something that I'll grow into.  Quickly.

Regards, Yvonne Muller, Bellvale Photography

[Marc Rochkind]

While it's theoretical possible to size a computer's memory according to the actual amount used by apps, that's not normally done. For anyone dealing with digital media, and taking into account the price of memory these days, I would say the minimum is 1GB. If you can swing it, you'll be much happier with 2GB. The difference in performace of 1GB over 512MB is enormous, and there is still a significant difference between 1GB and 2GB. (2GB with a 1.5MHZ CPU is much better than 1GB with a 2.5MHZ CPU for digital photography.)

If you're going to store media internally in the computer, you'll need a very large disk, but for anyone with a large catalog any amount of internal disk is not enough, so you have to use external disks, as described in The DAM Book. You'l lneed external disks for backup, as well. If the internal disk is only for what you're actually working on, then 80GB - 100GB is probably enough, and more is usually only slightly more epensive.

--Marc

[Yvonne Muller]

Marc,

Thank you so much.  I'll go for 2GB with a 2.5MHZ CPU, if I can.  That would be best, right?

I'm looking forward to getting everything organized.  Wow!

Yvonne

[Marc Rochkind]

Yes, go for the 2GB and 2.5MHz (or whatever). The system will be smoother, more reliable, more expandable, and much more pleasurable to use.

Lucky you... ;-)

--Marc

[johnbeardy]

Yvonne

Mark does make a very good point about external discs. Laptop drives tend to fail more often than those in desktops, at least in my experience, so don't put all your pixels in one pile - go for a smaller laptop drive and more external drives.

Also make sure your laptop can write DVDs. Sometimes the spec is misleading and means they can read DVDs, but not write them.

John

[Yvonne Muller]

Ahhh, thank you, John!!  Now I understand why no one really wants a huge drive in a laptop. Yes, I'll check it's DVD burning capability.  I've already had a horrible time with a battery run DVD burner.  A third of my images were burned hidden, some were retreivable, some not, at least so far.  I'd tried to get away w/o a laptop by using it...*very* ineffecient.
I appreciate your help.
Yvonne

[Yvonne Muller]

My electrical engineer friend thinks that you all must have thought that the laptop would be my only computer.  Is that what you thought?  I'm sorry if I made it seem that way.   I want to check with you all because I'm not so sure that you did think that.  My imaging work is done here in my studio.  I shoot in the studio less often than on location, in fields and swamps and beaches and deserts.  I really need the laptop to manage the days images on location.
Yvonne

[johnbeardy]

Yes, I did.

One thing I'd recommend is an Epson P2000 or P4000. I did a wedding shoot in the US last October and my laptop drive failed on the morning of the wedding, so my P2000 was a magnificent backup. Normally it just means I can leave the laptop in the car or hotel and then carry the P2000 up that hill, and I never run out of flash card space if it's a busy shooting day.

John

[snah]

Hello Yvonne,
I came across this thread. There are great replies to your memory RAM question, but there are a few more aspects to take into account because memory issues are omnipresent, be that within the camera, the memory card, the RAM etc.
So I figured I might as well provide my experience as a travelling landscape photographer.

Basically I have two setups. One mobile Studio while travelling and one home base.

My travelling Studio consits of the following:
Cameras and lenses (of course)
Plenty of Memory cards and batteries and chargers. This depends on the lenght of the trips (half or full day, several days)
A TopNotch Laptop with a large screen (16:9). In my case a SAMSUNG M40plus (really a great machine I can highly recommend).
I prefer a large screen as there is plenty of space to view/edit images and still have enough room for the toolbars from Photoshop.
Get lots of RAM for it, as this allows to use several applications at once (eg. PS CS2, Bridge, iVMP)
Also I highly recommend to get a fast CPU, though this becomes more important for the Home base setup.
Most important is to make sure to possibly double up all data (images) while travelling.
As a first instance a Laptop Disk is fine, but you shoud also get an external harddisk connected to your Laptop using the fast connection USB v2.x.
Some people suggest burning DVDs that of course is fine. But over time the price-value ratio is better for a external harddisk (that I can easily connect anywhere, especially at the home base.)
For that I am using a Western Digital Media Center as it has 3-4 memory card readers built in.
My Laptop has that too and this feature is convenient when there is no power in sight and I still need to free my memory cards to continue shooting.

My Home base Studio consists of LAN (local area network) a fast PC (this of course can be an Apple machine or a Windows XP machine).
Important is to get a very fast CPU, lots of RAM, fast disks and the capability to connect 2 screens.
One screen, the working screen should be one of high quality, possibly properly calibrated and very large.
The other screen can be any type of monitor and serves only to avoid a cluttered working screen. I use it to place the toolsbars and also to display IVMP.

The core of all this is to keep the data in a safe place. There are several options the way this can be achieved, the DAM Book decribes these options very professionally. I personally chose the following:
I bought a so called NAS-Device (Network Attached Storage) with 1.6 TB Diskspace. This NAS serves as my BigBucket. It connects to the LAN and I can easily access it from any PC (depending on LAN-configuration it could be accessed even from remote, but this implies some additional efforts to keep your data for yourself). The NAS is setup with RAID-5 (redundant array of independent disks, 5 stands for highest saftey lavel against disk failure).
To be specific it is a Irfant ReadyNAS, there are others form Snazzio, Thecus, the Cube, etc. but Irfants Device seems to be the best (http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2005/08/19/h_2_h_infrant/) and it does serve me very well.

The rough outline of my workflow starts with shooting images, transferring them onto my Laptop AND external disk (one may fail while under way). On the Laptop I can do sorting with IVMP and already some editing with PS CS2.
Once at home I transfer the gathered data to my NAS-Device and use IVMP to import my works from my Laptop version of IVMP to my main IVMP catalogue.
Now the hard work can begin.
But before doing so I do allways free my external disk, memory cards and my Laptop, also I get all the camera gear ready for immediate departure.

Hope this helps a little while making your choices.
You may wonder why I write such a long post. Well it simple, I learned by try and error and simply felt like condensing my experience and hence to share it with others.
Good luck and great light while shooting.

[Yvonne Muller]

It helps a lot in making my choices!  Thanks so much Snah and John.  You have made a very big difference.
Yvonne

[roberte]

Hi,

Peter describes backups in the hardware section of his book.

I'm a fan of rolling your own external hard drives, whether they're 2.5" or 3.5". On location I always have at least two copies of images. That could be the CF cards + P2000, or a laptop + external HDD.

For the latter I use a Seagate 2.5" HDD in a Fujitsu case, total cost = $80. One advantage of those tiny 2.5" ext HDD is they can be powered from the USB port using the computer's battery. Just remember to turn them off, unlike many 3.5" ext HDD cases the smaller versions have no fan and rely on passive cooling. With HDD heat = death.

-- Robert.