My cousin is a newly graduated photographer. Instead of putting a portfolio together, he is lounging around on my couch talking about putting a website together with his really low paying job. He plans on buying a computer. I was wondering in terms of quality, price, and ease (in that order) which was better to set up his on-line portfolio, a Mac (doesn’t have to be the newest on the market), or a home built PC? He has experience with both in his studies. He also wants to buy an iPod or that similar one from Dell (the jukebox?), b/c he’s so “into his music.” He plans on using a scanner b/c he says that digital cameras aren’t as quick as the shutter, and that people look like they’ve been cut out and pasted to the background. Any help is appreciated.
You don’t buy a PC (either Mac, Intel, or other) for hardware reasons. You buy it for software reasons.
The question is: what software does he want to use? Then get a computer that runs that software. Certain very specialized software for graphics is only available for Macs. It is highly unlikely that the software this particular guy is using is available only on Macs.
So price/performance issues take center stage. If he is doing photos only, not video, performance is hardly an issue.
Repeat, software dictates hardware.
In this case, yes. However, I personally DO use a PC precisely because of hardware reasons. Specifically, that I can put exactly what I want in the thing, and no more or less.
I am also something of an amateur photographer. I use digital. Almost all digital cameras will work fine with either architecture, and Photoshop is available for both.
It comes down to 1) what he’s comfortable with and 2) what he can afford. Maybe the other way around if he’s not averse to learning a new interface.
I used to have an iMac. I bought it in 2000, and it was fine for editing small graphic files, but way too slow for high-res files. I think it was a 350MHz model.
I recently upgraded to a 3GHz Dell Dimension PC, and it is hugely faster. Having said that, of course, one of the new iMacs would also be hugely faster than my old one. In the end though, it was compatability and software-availability issues that drove me to the PC.
Oh, and your cousin might want to rethink his gripes about digital cameras after checking out the latest digital SLRs. They really are starting seriously to rival film cameras.
Welcome to the boards, Colonel,
I use macs and PCs at home and at work for digital photography and web publishing and I can tell you that it probably doesn’t matter which he chooses. Both would serve equally as well for the uses you described.
As is often the case, the arguments you may hear over mac versus PC are of the “which color hammer is best to use on nails” variety.
This probably isn’t a General Question though because there is no right answer. Having said that though, here’s my take…
PCs are requently cheaper than a comparable mac set-up, but some studies show a higher total cost of ownership for PCs.
Experience suggests you’ll have a much greater potential for hardware conflicts on PCs – although this appears to be improving a little lately.
More software available for PCs, but all the big programs he’d need such as Photoshop and Microsoft Office are on both platforms so this isn’t much of an issue.
Macs offer a very nice integration of hardware and software, especially with programs such as iPhoto, IDVD, the iPod, etc. Elegant, really.
Quality: I’d give the nod to the mac.
Price: PCs generally cheaper – sometimes much cheaper – in the short run.
Ease of use: Depends on what you’re used to. I’d say mac, especially if you’re looking at the entire system as a whole (including scanner, digital camera, iPod)
Last note: the shutter lag that your friend notes with digital cameras is no longer a problem with many newer model cameras. I have a Canon 10D that has none – which was one of the reasons I replaced my film-based camera with it. Previous digital cameras did have a maddening lag that frequently rendered shots unusable, so I can see why he’d be wary. Also, I think the Canon Digital Rebel that just came out also is very responsive…
I’d say a PC is a better option. It’s easy to build or buy a PC on a budget that will be noticeably faster than Apple systems of a comparable price. As for quality, it’s up to who you buy from and/or what quality of parts you get. You can get a rock stable PC that will have little chance of a component failure over its lifespan, or a PC that crashes constantly and has frequent component failures. As for ease of use, it’s pretty much a tossup. Both a PC with Windows XP Pro and a Mac with OSX should be pretty much foolproof.
Where did your cousin graduate from with the kind of hogwash he’s feeding you?
My brother is a professional photographer for three major sports franchises and a major university. On occassion he will still use film. But it’s been digital for a couple of years.
As to computer, it really doesn’t make a difference. No one is going to buy a Mac with the additional components for the price you can put a PC together for. I can buy a 2 gig pentium 4 with Windows XP and a DVD RW drive from IBM for less than a grand.
So tell your cousin to get off his butt and start doing something.
One area where the Mac has a clear advantage is in printing photos. Apple has done an amazing job of calibrating the color displayed on a screen to that printed on a printer. You can easily edit photos on a screen and know how they will look when printed.
In Windows, photos will look very different on the display vs. after printing.
Why would a photography student be asking these questions? Did he sleep through the entire course? These are questions that have been covered in class, mulled over in his mind for years, and techniques have been applied throughout his studies. I think he just wants to hang out on your couch a while longer.
If he’s cheap and poor, take everyone’s advice and build a PC with the cheapest components and operating system you can find.
If he’s reasonably secure and not the world’s cheapest person, choose either a Mac or a brand-name PC made with quality parts.
Me? I have a Mac, and the cheapest PC that I could build, so, go figure. 
Note that there are several color-control programs that can calibrate a display properly. However, I’ve never had a problem with the colors on my monitor, and the output on the printer.
As for your cousin: If he’s putting his photos online, he can have a shit computer, since he’s not going to be directly hosting his images. I’d say you can put together a decent Celeron rig for $500-$600, including monitor.
If he wants to scan images, he’s going to want a film scanner, rather than developing the photos and using a flatbed. The cheapest “film” scanners are actually little add-on devices for existing flatbeds, and they’re all right… better than scanning in an already-developed 4"x6". However, if he wants to be taken seriously in the slightest, he’s probably gonna want a dedicated film scanner. Go look up the Nikon Coolscan IV, probably one of the best low(er) priced film scanners (translation: it doesn’t cost several grand). Search around for it on Google; you can probably find one for about $400-$450.
If he doesn’t mind having only tiny, shit-quality photos to represent himself online, he can pick up a $100 flatbed.
And I would definitely encourage him to start making the shift to digital. Film still is of higher-quality, but you still need a monster of a camera to get that quality, whereas you can a Canon 6 mp digital SLR for under a grand.
Oh, and tell him that, if he really wants to be serious as a photographer, he really should forgo the iPod until he gets his ::ahem:: more important equipment. Frankly, if he’s really serious about it, he’ll probably either A: work on getting a better paying job, or B: get a second job and save up a couple grand before he starts making investments. Otherwise, he’ll be six months into his “portfolio” and realize that he wasted eight or night hundred dollars on crap equipment, when he coulda dropped just another three or four hundred for pretty good equipment.
So far, you seem to be buying, not a computer, but his line about not knowing the difference between a Mac and a PC. How can anyone get a degree in Photography without already having a computer, knowing how to use it, and knowing exactly what he’d like to upgrade to? Unless, of course, he ranked lowest in his class, in which case he should get off your couch and get another kind of job.
Either way, it’s his decision, not yours.
Since the OP was talking about setting up an online portfolio, you need to understand gamma correction.
- http://www.cgsd.com/papers/gamma.html
- http://graphics.stanford.edu/gamma.html
- http://www.w3.org/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/53/gq-gamma.html
Now buy the software/hardware combo that allows your cousin to render the images the best way possible for web users to see them. Since the overwhelming majority of web users are connected via PCs, he should get a PC. This will allow him to set up his web site in short order for all those web PC users. He can then go back and create gamma corrected images for Mac users to his web site.
If your cousin is savvy enough to be worried about color correction and the differences between Mac and PC gamma, go with the Mac – the integration of Colorsync in the operating system ensures that what you see on the screen matches what you print on your printer and what you scan in on your scanner. This is why Macs continue to dominate the media creation biz; nobody wants to blow a $10,000 print job because the computer was misrepresenting the colors and gave the new ad an ugly shade of green.
(Yeah, you can get a PC for cheaper than a Mac, but you get what you pay for. That’s why used Macs sell for a lot more than what used PCs sell for, too.)
That said, I have to agree with most of the other folks who think your cousin is feeding you some bullstuff about his education – if he’s really gone through his courses by now, he should have a strong preference for what gear he wants to use. And the bit about digital cameras with slow shutters might have been true two years ago, but is definitely out of place now. Someone’s being taken for a ride here…
Some clarification: my cousin graduated 2 years ago, though near the top of his class. He would’ve graduated summa cum laude, except his grades from his first college and degree (Bio) carried over and brought down his overall GPA. He only graduated with honors. He’s had shows and won some awards. He went to school at University of South Carolina (B.A. media arts). He has a F100, which he paid for through prize money. He worked for his state’s DOT for a while before coming here and sitting on my couch for the year – something about how he doesn’t want non-professionals telling him what a good picture is, and his abhorrence for studio work (he states it more eloquently).