Camera Labs

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum and photography. I've recently bought the Nikon D90 after much consideration and after several weeks reading through the posts on the forum. I'm really pleased with the camera and would like to buy a laptop to use with my D90.

I'm buying the laptop as a replacement for my desktop I currently use. I would like portability but it's not something I'm going to be carrying around with me everyday so weight isn't an issue, just nice to sit somewhere in the house other than the office and take away with me at weekends.

My budget is a maximum of £1200 really and in an ideal world I must admit I'd love a Mac book pro 17", however, I can't justify that amount of money. I will be using it as my main PC and will be looking to run Photoshop as well as day to day tasks.

I've been onto the Dell website and I've seen the Studio 17". I've personalised it to boost RAM, Screen etc and would like you thoughts. Like I said, I'm not up to speed with technology so any suggestions would be much appreciated. Couldn't change the graphics card though, will this make a huge difference?

Studio 17" - £1190
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40Ghz, 3MB, 1066MHz)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 BIT) - English
17.0" Widescreen WUXGA+ CCFL (1920x1200) TFT Display with TrueLife™
8192MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x4096]
640GB (5.400rpm) Serial ATA Dual Hard Drive (2x 320GB)
256MB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3650
Fixed Internal DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive including Software
Primary 9-cell 85 WHr Lithium Ion battery
Intel WiFi Link 5300 Half Mini Card (802.11 a/g/n) (Centrino)
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module

Thanks guys, all comments and suggestions welcome.

Dan

You have pretty much the same setup as I do, and I can say Lightroom and photoshop run quite well with my D90's jpeg and raw files. You could save some money by going for the Inspiron body and speccing that the same (that's what I did).

Also, get the screen with LED lighting if you can. It cost me only 20 dollars extra, but LED backlighting stays bright where CCFL falls off after a couple of years.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

get 7,200 rpm drives and dont have them mirrored

Also get the lowest cpu with 6MB L2 Cache.


TBH get a Envy with a Core i7

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MY FLICKR!

Hello.
I love photography, I always take that photo which looks very natural, I will advise to take Sony W30/W35, Canon or Nikon. You can take any of this one. These all camera have very clear and natural result. Specially I will recommend you about Canon A530. It pretty small and takes good photos.
Thank you very much for sharing your problem.

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acai berry

Unless you absolutely need that GPU, find a model with a less one and get an Core i7 instead of the C2D in that one, the i7 machine will last you longer unless you have a use for the GPU. You didn't mention your primary usage apart from PS but I assume day to day tasks will not be graphics intensive. PS does benefit from the GPU but not by much, a CPU upgrade would be more significant.

Nothing wrong with that P8600 though, I have something very similar.

+1 for LED backlighting if you can get it, much more enjoyable to use IMO and slightly better overall image quality but no laptop screen is going to be anything more than average to be honest.

Not sure how much you need the 17" screen but the Dell Studio XPS 16 (15.6" screen) has an i7 and a RGB LED (one for each colour as opposed to one white LED) which apart from the screen size would be great for photo editting if you don't have an external monitor. It can be had for roughly the same price and a better GPU but one less HD.

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Graham
Flickr

Hi Bevo,

May I wish you a warm welcome to the CameraLabs forum.

As this will be your main PC don't forget to have a back-up plan in place. You could burn your data to DVD but with USB hard drives becoming so cheap it might be a better plan to set aside a portion of your budget for one of those. A basic 640GB unit can be as little as about £100 and that could buy a lot of peace of mind.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

get a macbook 15inch then!

if you know any students you get 15% of the price at the apple store or online, or you just phone them up saying your at bla bla university and you'll get the discount!

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Mark Osborne
My life through an iPhone

Apple store "Black Friday" deals £71 off every MacBook Pro so they start at £828 for a 13 inch model, 15 inch models start at £1,228.
http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/s ... TU3MjI5NzY

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Nikon D90
Nikkor AF-S DX; 18-105 f/3.5-5.6G VR, 55-300 f/4.5-5.6G VR, 35mm f/1.8G
Speedlight SB-700

http://keystrokesukimages.com

just curious how significantly faster compare to 3MB one?

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RadiantLite - Cameras and Lenses Comparison Reviews, buying guide, photo taking techniques and other tips
My Portfolio - Some photos from my work

Larger cache to store code, means less fetching from RAM. Speeds things up in general, but not so much in the benchmarks.

See http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cac ... 709-8.html

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".