laptop/netbook for the photographer?

[hillbillyjake]

my wife is really starting to take some good photos. i woul dlike to get her a laptop or net book to use fro her pictures. i thinkthat she would mainly be using it fro her pictures and the internet. the one thing she said the she definitely wants is wi-fi. i would like to stay in the $300-$350 if this is possible to do and get a good machine. thanks in advance.

 

[nwoods]

Um, that price seems a little low for a good machine. If you aim for $900 you have a lot more competent options.

 

[ywen]

buy a used IBM thinkpad T-series.. those things are built like tanks.. you can probably get one for $350 that can be adequate for photo editing.. The larger the T-number the newer the model.

 

[hillbillyjake]

i was worried that my budget was going to be to low. i was hoping that i could get into something adequate for that price but i guess not. i may try to find one of the thinkpad t-series. thanks

 

[FLYFISHEXPERT]

I picked up a used HP netbook for $400 prior to our trip to Chile. It doesn't do everything that our full size laptop can do, but it did allow us to travel and share photos with home.

If you would really like to have the capability to edit photos, you will need to spend more than your budget. That said, we picked up our Lenovo Thinkpad from Office Max at the Black Friday sale for ~$350, so watch the adds.

 

[Lost Canadian]

I've spent over $4 grand on the computer setup that I use just for picture editing and that's excluding the printer. So don't feel too bad saving up a bit more for your wifes photo machine, it'll be worth it. Try to find something with a good resolution display, and preferablably of the backlit LED kind.

 

[Lostmanifesto]

Editing raw files requires power, memory and space. Do yourself a favor and save up. I just spent $3,200 on a new MacBook Pro for photo editing. I need every ounce of it to do my job. Good luck!

 

[hillbillyjake]

from my research i was concerned that my budget wasn't going to cut it and you guys have confirmed it. the bad part about saving up is i was hoping to get her the computer for Christmas this year. maybe next year. thanks for al the info guys.

any Christmas ideas fro the photographer in the $300 range? ideas?

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

I agree with the others about the Lenovo series of laptops.

I've tried Acer, Dell, HP (Worst by far) and finally after needing things fixed and repaired on each one, moved up to a Lenovo.

Funny part is I searched around a bit and found a great deal $400ish range on Newegg.com. Ordered it and noticed 2 days later it was actually $70 cheaper. Called them and they refunded me the difference.

I have a desktop cpu, but it hasn't even been turned on in months because I'm usually working on images at the tiki bar, with a client or on the road. So I wanted a bigger laptop with a 17" screen.

This Lenovo is lighter than all my other laptops, is larger (Others were 15" models) and uses less power because it has a LED screen. It's got 6gigs of RAM, a 500gig HDD, and is pretty awesome for working on my images.

All that for under $500. I'd watch Newegg.com for deals this week and next. They had a ton of good stuff for Veterans Day and keep advertising the Black Friday deals already.

 

[PirateMcGee]

from my research i was concerned that my budget wasn't going to cut it and you guys have confirmed it. the bad part about saving up is i was hoping to get her the computer for Christmas this year. maybe next year. thanks for al the info guys.

any Christmas ideas fro the photographer in the $300 range? ideas?

is your wife an amateur photographer? what does she prefer to shoot (portraits, landscapes, etc.)? What gear does she already have?

 

[PirateMcGee]

if all else fails...http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?op=Process&func=SendGiftCert

 

[ywen]

I would not recommend saving for $3000 on a high speed computer so you can process 20MegaPixel raw files.. Is your wife shooting in JPEG? Is she just looking to color correct and crop the JPEG files? a $350 laptop with (dual core CPU), proper software and adequate RAM (2GB+) is more than sufficient for what I described above.

If she process high resolution RAW, does multi-layer compositions in photoshop, than you need to budget for 4 figures if you want faster performance. The above setup can still work.

I've processed client's portrait images in RAW format using Photoshop on an MSI netbook with a slow 1.6GH Atom CPU and it was still usable. A $350 laptop will be sufficient.

 

[LR Max]

If you've got the space, I recommend a desktop. Years ago I bought a desktop computer and have under $1k in it (nice big monitor, added hard drives, upgraded RAM, upgraded video card) and it has been awesome. Its nice having an extra TB already in the computer for photos. Just save em to that hard drive, no externals, no worrying about slowing down the computer, it just works.

Nice 19" monitor is clutch as well.

Laptops, x-whatever on IBM products. They work very well and if taken care of, last a very long time. I've had good luck with HP, but apparently I'm the only person who has so take that into consideration.

I say, try to get as much RAM as possible, a fast, big hard drive and a good video card. When I was building computers, I noticed those two things make all the difference in the world. Unfortunately I am unable to advise you on these since I haven't looked into computers in years. My current fleet has been going great.

Photos, especially shooting in RAW, will eat through 200GB quick.

Lastly, with "older" computers, you gotta be reasonable with them when photo editing. My desktop which is of 07 vintage can handle 8 photos + pandora + gchat fairly well. It DOES NOT handle 12 photos + 12 videos off of youtube at 1080p at the same time. So if possible, remind her of this.

 

[hillbillyjake]

i know that her camera is an olympus (520i)? and i believe with 2 different lenses. she does not have a big zoom lense. i know that she has the photoshop program but hasn't installed it yet. i would like to get her a computer to install the program on. thte only thing that ihave seen her do now is crop pictures, choose black and white or color, cepia (sp). i would like to get her something adequate btu possibly grow into a little. i can probably go $500 but that is the top mark. absolutely. if i need to get soem more specifics on the camera, i can. thanks.

 

[nwoods]

Photoshop is intimidating to learn, but you can learn a LOT from one of Scott Kelby's excellent tutorial videos. So basically, it sounds like she shoots jpegs, and needs to simply process her images so that they can be shared. I think with those parameters, your budget is practical. Maybe I missed this, but why a laptop? You can get a LOT more horsepower for your dollar in a PC sized machine. Or, as an alternative, have you considered a MacMini? If you already have a monitor, this might be a decent solution for you. It comes with iPhoto which can do what she needs, and will run Photoshop quite well. Here is a fairly newly refurbished model: http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC815LL/A