Matt Gholson's nononsense
guide to the Digital Darkroom
Part One: The computer
To get the ball rolling on this series of articles explaining the
digital darkroom I thought I would start buy discussing the key
piece of equipment you'll need a computer.
OK I’m looking at the Popular photography magazine article entiled
“Build a Digital Darkroom (Feb 2004) and their first question is
Mac or PC, screw that question, that isn't even a question, who
buys macs. Who would want one of those queer looking see through
plastic keyboard idiot boxes. Macs suck end of story. So you are
buying a PC, but what PC to buy. My advice would be to save some
money, learn about computers and amaze your friends by building
your own system out of the components you pick out. This is really
much easier then you would think. I don't have time explain how
to do it but I'm sure you could find everything you need on the
web. The first step in getting the most for your money is to find
the current technology sweet spot. Go to www.Pricewatch.com and
look at Barebones computers with no OS. Lets look at AMD since I
am a big fan, the 3200 Athlon is AMDs top of the line chip and a
barebones, with that costs 231 bucks. AMDs slowest availabe Athlon
chip is the 1500XP and it costs 176 bucks. You would think that
the slowest would be cheapest but oddly enough not so, as the speeds
increase the prices fall, and fall fast. The 2100,2000,1900,and
1800XP models all cost about 112 dollars, so right now the sweet
spot is the 2100. Belive me the 2100 will have all the power you
need to do just about anything. If you have no idea what I am talking
about and have no interest in building your computer or even understanding
what the basic components do you can still apply this lesson to
buying a pre built system.
Even if you are buying a system you will still have to make some
choices about what components you want so lets look at what they
are and what you need.
CPU, the more power the better, I think AMD chips are a better
value then Intels, but some people will disagree. You really won’t
notice much difference in a few steps here so I wouldn’t spend it
all on the CPU.
Memory, the more the better for handling the large files associated
with digital imaging. In contrast to the CPU you will see a big
difference from 256 to 512, or from 512 to a gig. The more the merrier.
Hard Drive, The article in Popular photography I just read said
to save money on your computer buy purchasing a model with a smaller
hard drive and buying an extra external model to save your photos
on. They warn you your hard drive could fail at any minute and you
will lose all your work. I suppose they are right your drive could
fail any second, but it probably won't. I have used about six different
hard drives over the last eight years and they all still work, I
have never had a Hard Drive fail on me. The article tells you to
get a 40 gig hard drive over an 80 gig drive then buy a high dollar
external drive to store your files. This is a big mistake as most
people who have an internet connection knows 40 gigs isn't going
to last long. Instead I would opt for a much larger hard drive,
100 plus gig, and forget about the external drive. Of course better
safe then sorry, you need to back up your work, but CD-Rs can do
it for you so cheaply, I have about 3 gigs of images on my hard
drive right now. I could back that up on 5 CDs for 50 cents. Or
one DVD-R for about a dollar.
Monitor. The current trend is LCDs, they are becoming very close
to CRTs, the big glass screen monitor we are all used to, and they
have the added advantage of being light and taking up less space.
They have the added disadvantage of costing 4 times as much. You
can get a fine 17 inch monitor for around 100 bucks, even better
is a 19 inch for less then 200, I'm sure packing that monitor around
isn't going to hurt your back to bad.
Video Card. Well between image editing you are going to want to
play some Quake or Doom or something so get yourself a decent 3D
card, it will also speed up your windows environment.
Input devices. We will look at scanners and cameras later. Beyond
the standard keyboard and mouse the Popular photography article
claims that you really need a tablet, which is a input devices that
allows you to move your cursor with a pen on a tablet instead of
the mouse, and they only cost around 200 dollars. My advise, save
that 200 dollars for something more useful and learn to use a mouse.
USB or Firewire? Who cares, all motherboards will now support USB2.0
and some will support Firewire, most devices you buy will plug into
USB, some will need firewire, if so buy a 15 dollar PCI firewire
card from ebay and be done with it.
The bottom line. The popular photography article claims that you
can buy a serious image editing machine for 1500 to 2000. I claim
that I can build a more serious machine for about half of their
cheapest estimate and here is how I'll do it.
110 dollars 2500XP Barton core CPU and motherboard
40 dollars for a case and power supply
80 dollars for 512MB of DDR3000 RAM
100 dollars for a 160 gig Western Digital hard drive
100 dollars for a DVD/CD Burner
100 dollars for a GeForce 5800 Video Card
100 dollars for a 17 inch monitor
50 dollars for a kickin sound card so you can rock out when you
are manipulating
50 dollars for a wireless mouse and some generic keyboard
Talley it all up and for 730 dollars you get a BOSS system for
less then what a budget system would cost from Dell or someone like
them. Even if you forget to put a heatsink on the CPU and burn it
up you have still saved enough to buy another one or three.
Next week we will look at the next part of equation where to find,
or I mean where to buy all the software you are going to need.
