New PC for Photo Processing

Sorry I’ve been short on posts lately, my attention’s been divided between some building work (and the resulting decorating) at home and the arrival of a new PC.  I previously talked about adding life to my old PC by clearing out shots that I didn’t need to keep and that certainly spun it out for a few months.  But lately Windows XP has developed a problem with one of the processes that’s caused it to grind to a halt on too many occasions.  It may well be repairable by reinstalling XP, but I came to the conclusion that the computer’s had a good life (about 8 or 9 years) and any investment of time and/or money in trying to keep it going any longer was probably going to just suck up valuable resources without any significant long-term benefit and that it was time to bite the bullet and order a new one.

The new machine is well-stocked, with a 15.6 inch B+RGLED screen, Inte Core i5 processor, 6GB RAM, 750GB 7,200rpm hard disk, Windows 7 and plenty of connectivity including HDMI and USB 3.0.  No matter how good a computer is, there’s always an amount of setting up you need to do to get it how you want it – installing software (“Now, where did I put that licence key? Oh yes, carefully filed with all the others…”) and transferring data (“I didn’t realise I had that much in there”).  Of  course, when you’ve got a new toy to play with you just want to get on with it and dive in!  But I’ve been good, I’ve been restrained and I’ve got everything set up how I want it first.  Well, more or less 😉

Yesterday I processed my first set of pictures which were ones from the Trossachs, hopefully to be included on some websites of the area soon.  I was really impressed with how blisteringly fast the new machine is!  I’m also enjoying exploring the features of Capture One v6 Pro which is a significant upgrade from the previous version I was using.

As well as adding a few more images to the galleries from recent shoots, I’m hoping to get some shots from a session in the Lake District in a couple of weeks.  My biggest hope is that we get decent weather on the fells and the chance of some sunset / sunrise pics.  More to come…