Nikon d200 software/harware requirements

[wildart]

Hi, i have been thinking of trying digital and would most likely go with the nikon d200 as i already shoot nikon. My main interest is wildlife but am really hoping to shoot some amateur sports(rugby) and sell some images to the participants. Im only in the first stages of looking at this and would like to know what computer hardware/software and computer monitor/screen would do justice to the images that can be produced on this camera.Is the packaged Nikon software good? . I expect doing a whole update on our system will most probably be needed but at least if i know whats needed i can start weighing the cost.
Any tips on what quality of printer would be needed to produce a sellable image would also be appreciated.
Thanks
Mick.

[cyberlord]

You're going to need a graphics editing program of some sort. Photoshop (LE, Elements, 7.0, CS, CS2), Paintshop (dont know the versions available), GIMP or GIMPshop, all come to mind as good graphics programs.

You will need a decent sized monitor, 17" and above are best, but you can and I have used a 14" monitor in the past. You do'nt need a super fast gaming video card with all the 3D affects, you just need resolution. Find one that does at least 1600x1200, but again I have done editing on much less.

Pretty much any off the shelf computer these days will be just fine for editing digital images so long as your not going to get into video or play heavy 3D games.

For accessories you will need a DVD/CD burner, USB or Firewire to support a card reader (so U dont have to download from camera).

You will also need a good book on the subject, depending on what graphic software you have in mind.

On the printer, many agree it's best to take your images to a place to get them printed as it's really not cost effective by the time you take in photo paper, archival inks, wear and tear on a printer (buy a new printer every 1-2 years) etc. It all depends on how much control you want of the process.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. Got to go grab a cup of coffee.

Tim

[deckcadet]

Hi there.
I guess you could consider me one of the experts on the D200 seeing as I've had one about as long as anyone could ;)

The packaged software is for people who don't want to get the most out of their camera's RAW format. It does however include a 30 day trial of Nikon Capture, which in my opinion after trying several raw converters is the one that will give you the best image quality.

With the D200 and other recent Nikons it seems that 3rd party systems like Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw are rendering way more noise when NR is turned off than Capture does with NR off.
If you set in camera noise reduction to any of the on settings, for raw files the setting is applied via Capture in the appropriate levels.

Capture is also the only one that reads your in camera settings and allows you to change them...things like color modes, saturation, etc.

I would pick up the camera and just use the Nikon Capture 4.4 trial, as Capture NX is coming out in about a month, with vast improvements. www.capturenx.com

You may also want to try Photoshop Elements 4.0 to have some additional photoshop features, but Capture NX is bringing a lot more than just a RAW converter.

See this story:
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/24317.html

Anyways, as far as a computer you will want fast processor, plenty of RAM, and a decent video card- this is becoming more and more important, as the latest generation of photo programs such as Apple's Aperture and Adobe Lightroom seem to be using the video card more.

A nice big monitor is also a good thing to have. Calibrate it.

I currently use an apple system, which you may wish to consider...the new macs can run both OS X and Windows. If not, both windows and mac computers use intel processors now... I don't know your timeframe for buying this stuff, but Intel is releasing a new line of chips starting in July- the Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Duo Extreme processors are their new desktop and mobile dual-core processors. Their Woodcrest (Xeon) core duo processor is coming out next month, and will support multiple processors, meaning you can have quad core computers. Apple generally uses server level chips in their towers, so most expect that the top of the line apple when the intel towers arrive will have two Xeon (woodcrest) processors each with two cores, most likely the 3ghz model, for a total of 4 cores at 3ghz.

this may be overly complicated and technical. Sorry.

[Franglais]

Hi, i have been thinking of trying digital and would most likely go with the nikon d200 as i already shoot nikon. My main interest is wildlife but am really hoping to shoot some amateur sports(rugby) and sell some images to the participants. Im only in the first stages of looking at this and would like to know what computer hardware/software and computer monitor/screen would do justice to the images that can be produced on this camera.Is the packaged Nikon software good? . I expect doing a whole update on our system will most probably be needed but at least if i know whats needed i can start weighing the cost.
Any tips on what quality of printer would be needed to produce a sellable image would also be appreciated.
Thanks
Mick.

I have a D200. I use Nikon Capture 4.4 to process my RAW files. As far as I'm aware this is the only software that allows you to adjust the exposure +/- 2 stops, and get back detail that has burnt out in skies, for example.

I use a computer with an Athlon 1.4GHz processor (about 3 years old) with 512MB of RAM, a 120GB hard disk and a IIYAMA 19 inch monitor. This is fine except that the processing time with the 10Mpix RAW files is rather slow.

I am very satisfied with my Epson R2400 printer. It does print sizes up to A3+, beautiful black and white with no off-colour tints - and the prints are supposed to last 100 years, which means that I can sell them without people coming back saying they have faded.

Charles

[deckcadet]

Same here on the 2400- I absolutely love mine. i had to fiddle a bit with the ink volume presets, but my prints are fantastic.