Let's chat about DSLR vs Point and Shoot - looking for some wisdom / experience

[tarponchik]

If you opt for 50 megapixel images, add maybe another $1.5K to your budget cause you'll need a new comp to store and process such images. RAW files this size are reportedly 55-75 MB in CR2 or 40-60 MB in DNG format. This makes only about 15-16 images per GB on your CD card when you shoot and 50 GB per hundred pictures if you store DNGs.

 

[nanohawk]

If you opt for 50 megapixel images, add maybe another $1.5K to your budget cause you'll need a new comp to store and process such images. RAW files this size are reportedly 55-75 MB in CR2 or 40-60 MB in DNG format. This makes only about 15-16 images per GB on your CD card when you shoot and 50 GB per hundred pictures if you store DNGs.

Not really a big deal, although I don't see 50MP images working underwater. At this point it's really a question of go cheap or go for interchangeable lenses. Go cheap would be the TG-6. ILC would be the E-M1 mk ii which is somewhat the direction I'm leaning.

I have a little Western Digital "My Passport" 250GB SSD that I use for dealing with images/video from drone work. Hehe, you think UW photography is bad, wait til you have 15GB of stills from a drone mapping project. Rinse repeat 4 times for a days work.

My "laptop" is a Microsoft (sub)SurfacePro. It's honestly, bar none, the lousiest laptop I've ever owned in my life. It does however do the job and has some unique features I need for work. No other windows tablet has that form factor and a glove type case that I can use. Anyway, I digress.... the sub-surface has a small SSD so the My Passport is a practical way to deal with that. It also makes ingesting the images and processing them on my desktop much easier. My image library lives on a NAS device anyway with mirrored drives.

The surface works well enough that I sold off my clamshell laptop because I never used it. I've been eyeing the Surface Pro 8 but it hasn't been a priority to upgrade. I currently have a Surface Pro 7 and it has some hardware quirks that caused unsolicited reboots among other "features." It does get points for being rugged. It is not, however an iPad Pro, nor does it have a camera that would do justice to any mobile device made in the last 10 years.

 

[tarponchik]

Not really a big deal, although I don't see 50MP images working underwater. At this point it's really a question of go cheap or go for interchangeable lenses. Go cheap would be the TG-6. ILC would be the E-M1 mk ii which is somewhat the direction I'm leaning.

I have a little Western Digital "My Passport" 250GB SSD that I use for dealing with images/video from drone work. Hehe, you think UW photography is bad, wait til you have 15GB of stills from a drone mapping project. Rinse repeat 4 times for a days work.

My "laptop" is a Microsoft (sub)SurfacePro. It's honestly, bar none, the lousiest laptop I've ever owned in my life. It does however do the job and has some unique features I need for work. No other windows tablet has that form factor and a glove type case that I can use. Anyway, I digress.... the sub-surface has a small SSD so the My Passport is a practical way to deal with that. It also makes ingesting the images and processing them on my desktop much easier. My image library lives on a NAS device anyway with mirrored drives.

The surface works well enough that I sold off my clamshell laptop because I never used it. I've been eyeing the Surface Pro 8 but it hasn't been a priority to upgrade. I currently have a Surface Pro 7 and it has some hardware quirks that caused unsolicited reboots among other "features." It does get points for being rugged. It is not, however an iPad Pro, nor does it have a camera that would do justice to any mobile device made in the last 10 years.

I work with A6000 with a 16-50/PZ kit lens in a seafrog housing and a single Intova ISS2000 flash. This set up is about $1K (I bought A6000 used) and suits me.

 

[Hoag]

I work with A6000 with a 16-50/PZ kit lens in a seafrog housing and a single Intova ISS2000 flash. This set up is about $1K (I bought A6000 used) and suits me.

I shoot with an A6000 camera underwater (different lens combo and different housing) and it is a great little camera. I have no hesitation at all recommending the A6xxx series of Sony cameras.

 

[tursiops]

Not really a big deal, although I don't see 50MP images working underwater. At this point it's really a question of go cheap or go for interchangeable lenses. Go cheap would be the TG-6. ILC would be the E-M1 mk ii which is somewhat the direction I'm leaning.

I have a little Western Digital "My Passport" 250GB SSD that I use for dealing with images/video from drone work. Hehe, you think UW photography is bad, wait til you have 15GB of stills from a drone mapping project. Rinse repeat 4 times for a days work.

My "laptop" is a Microsoft (sub)SurfacePro. It's honestly, bar none, the lousiest laptop I've ever owned in my life. It does however do the job and has some unique features I need for work. No other windows tablet has that form factor and a glove type case that I can use. Anyway, I digress.... the sub-surface has a small SSD so the My Passport is a practical way to deal with that. It also makes ingesting the images and processing them on my desktop much easier. My image library lives on a NAS device anyway with mirrored drives.

The surface works well enough that I sold off my clamshell laptop because I never used it. I've been eyeing the Surface Pro 8 but it hasn't been a priority to upgrade. I currently have a Surface Pro 7 and it has some hardware quirks that caused unsolicited reboots among other "features." It does get points for being rugged. It is not, however an iPad Pro, nor does it have a camera that would do justice to any mobile device made in the last 10 years.

If you are going to buy a real camera, you ought to buy a real computer to go with it. Your postprocessing is at least as important as your camera.

 

[nanohawk]

If you are going to buy a real camera, you ought to buy a real computer to go with it. Your postprocessing is at least as important as your camera.

Yea, as I said the Surface is a field computer. It was chosen to meet specific requirements related to a piece of software I run in my inspection company. Despite being a crappy computer, it's far more efficient to use it for conducting inspections as opposed to taking pictures and going back to a laptop.

I use my desktop for editing, mainly due to having an array of larger and better monitors. It's role with photography is to copy files from an sdcard to a portable SSD. From there I might make a first cut review looking for out of focus, blurred, or "bonus" photos. A bonus photo is an accidental photo, typically of something uninteresting.

That said, for stills you really don't need that much horsepower for post-processing. Today's processors are all significantly more powerful than the ones from 10 and 20 years ago.

Video is a different animal and does require more horsepower for rendering. My desktop is getting a little long in the tooth, but it still does the job in a reasonable amount of time. Intel has done a fantastic job of making it utterly confusing to understand which processors are an improvement over what other processors. I have a background in IT so I can only imagine what it's like for a non-tech person.

 

[tursiops]

Yea, as I said the Surface is a field computer. It was chosen to meet specific requirements related to a piece of software I run in my inspection company. Despite being a crappy computer, it's far more efficient to use it for conducting inspections as opposed to taking pictures and going back to a laptop.

I use my desktop for editing, mainly due to having an array of larger and better monitors. It's role with photography is to copy files from an sdcard to a portable SSD. From there I might make a first cut review looking for out of focus, blurred, or "bonus" photos. A bonus photo is an accidental photo, typically of something uninteresting.

That said, for stills you really don't need that much horsepower for post-processing. Today's processors are all significantly more powerful than the ones from 10 and 20 years ago.

Video is a different animal and does require more horsepower for rendering. My desktop is getting a little long in the tooth, but it still does the job in a reasonable amount of time. Intel has done a fantastic job of making it utterly confusing to understand which processors are an improvement over what other processors. I have a background in IT so I can only imagine what it's like for a non-tech person.

If you are going to get a real camera and travel with it, you'll want a real laptop while on travel.

 

[nanohawk]

If you are going to get a real camera and travel with it, you'll want a real laptop while on travel.

Nah. You are wrong. You might want a better laptop for travel. I am fine with just about anything for travel. The technical requirements are quite low for first cut and moving files. That's all I'm going to do while traveling.

The majority of mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops, etc) do not have color calibrated displays. I don't see the value in editing on a non-color calibrated device.

 

[tursiops]

That's all I'm going to do while traveling.

Yeah, right. That pretty much makes you different from many other traveling photographers.

 

[Hoag]

If you are going to get a real camera and travel with it, you'll want a real laptop while on travel.

I try to do at least one vacation per year that is a dedicated photo trip, typically landscape photography in which I might shoot 1-2,000 images. Although I take a Laptop with me for quick editing, I do almost all of my editing on my desktop computer once I get home.

I do the same thing on a dive trip. I don't normally spend more than a bare minimum of my vacation time editing.

Having said that, I am booked on a photography workshop this fall in which editing will be a key component of the workshop on a daily basis.