Is this the most exciting time to be into digital photography or what?

Jason77 wrote in post #2760408
i have similar memories... i was in my last year of college in '98 and the school had bought a sony digital camera that was also 1 MP but it didn't use cf cards... it wrote to a floppy disk.

In my last year of college the 8bit desktop had 1 - 5.25 floppy and a 10MB harddrive. Amber screens were really cool compared to the green screen.
My camera was a Canon F1. The coolest feature was I could slide the prism off the cam body and use the ground glass to focus directly. This allowed me to take photos of people who thought I was cleaning my camera.

I tried Vista and I wasn't really fond of it. Sure; the operating system may be developing groundbreaking new stuff but at this moment I'm quite happy with XP, the 'sleek UI' (which is clearly a complete knock-off attempt at third party GUIs) is not justification enough to buy such a bloated memory hog.

gparvan wrote in post #2764322
Hmmm, I'm still running W2K on my production servers at work. In April/May the servers are slated for W2K3. Best not to rush into new software from MS.

Win2K was the best OS that MS ever pretended didn't exist,..

Now they are doing all they can to pretend that XP64 bit doesn't exist.. another shame

and don't forget about the iMac/proMac ,

I'm going Vista tomorrow since it now supports caching on a SD card. Laptops can really only take 2 gigs of ram economically. and we get mostly 5400 rpm drives.

So caching on a 2 gb SD card to speed up the machine is my goal. CPU never gets taxed, it's the drive speed and 2 gig ram $$$$ limit that keeps my from having that last ooompph.

Looking forward to using my Sd cards for something purposeful.

Lord_Malone wrote in post #2752673
1. Microsoft releases Vista - Yeah, it's full of bugs right now, but after it matures and stabilizes and more software is written specifically for it, it could be the best OS to date. You definately can't deny the sleek UI.

2. Adobe releases Lightroom v1.0 - The ultimate workflow solution for photographers? You betcha. I think this will revolutionize digital photography in the same way PhotoShop has done for digital imaging. There's just so much more room for growth potential with this software.

3. Adobe set to release CS3 - What more needs to be said?

4. Canon annouces the 1D MKIII, 16-35L II and 580ex II - The 1D MKIII is everything the action shooter asked for and more. It was already tough to improve on near perfection (1D2 and 1D2N), but this just revolutionized the action, sports, PJ, wildlife genre and took this to an entirely new level.

5. Intel - faster multicore processors. More powerful, yet uses less power. Can have multiple RAM hungry apps running simutaneously.

It's 3 years until the year 2010. And I believe we are on the cutting edge, and witnessing a whole new evolution in digital imaging.

1. XP is a mture product, works well. I see no advantage to my photography in changing right now.

2. Light room (tested beta for a few months) is a very good product. DAM lets it down. I will be investing in a good DAM package and using lightroom beta for a while yet.

3. CS2 does more than I can use right now - why change!!

4. Good opportunity to invest in a previously loved MkII.

5. PCs' are fast enough already. I used to upgrade my PC every 4 to 5 years, now it is longer because the added performance advantage (for what I use my PC for) is smaller every year.

I do agree that it is a good time to be a digital photographer. The leaning curve gets shallower every year, but the fundamentals have not changed - standing on a hillside in the cold waiting for the light to change across the landscape at 6am for example.

Jon, The Elder wrote in post #2756998
Ya' should of been around in 1998 when I paid $900.00 for a Kodak 240, with a full 1Mp image file. The biggest CF card was 64Mb.

I can still remember the staff meeting at the magazine I worked back in 1999 where the editor announced that we could now use the new 2.1 mp cameras! but only for tech stories and 1 page spreads or less! I ran to the store and dropped $2200 bucks on the latest Nikon 950 and accessories...I still have and use that old relic. and several framed 8X10's shot by that camera are still on the wall. That day changed the way I looked at photography and inspired me to sshoot more than I ever dreamed possible. Now with the modern DSLRs, "L" lenses, RAW, faster laptops and better software....it just keeps getting better and better. I love chimping!

Cutting edge? There have been so little real advances in computers over the last 10 years it is pathetic. Babysteps is all they are.

I remember reading a report about a new major idea in computer program called "analytical algorithms" (I think) about 10 years ago. Its first principle was to get a 50% chance of finding 1 out of 100,000 items in a database you'd have to search half those items or n/2 (n being number of items), but someone got an analytical algorthims to work as 1/square root of N, which is 158 times faster. And at the time there was said to be a big push in this application at universities, but I cannot see that these were ever brought into personal computers if they got more analytical algorithms to function.

Newer programs run the same speed or slower than the program they replaced. New CPUs are hardly faster than one rated 50% slower. I see the problem being how software is coded. There is no reason that a OPERATING SYSTEM should require 1GB or RAM as vista does. An OS should just run OTHER programs not have so many internal hidden programs running that is requires so many more resources. Programs are become so bloated because everyone wants every function available from a right click menu - which requires more programming to be stored in RAM for that quick access.

In order for software to become more user friendly for the common user, they have to put so much extra stuff in it, and hence into RAM/swap file, that program cannot run fast anymore.

A bit of a read, to keep in mind what used to be the top of the line: NC2000 and DCS520

This is about the time that a Mac 8100 was 'fast'.

I think you are going to be horrendously disappointed.