When I was spec’ing out my new Mac Pro, it seems that Apple’s cost for upgrading the system memory was pretty expensive. Knowing the way I use computers, 2 gigbytes wasn’t going to cut it. But an upgrade from 2 to 4 gigabytes was $500! I know that a Mac Pro uses expensive 800MHz fully-buffered error-correcting memory, but that’s still awfully steep.

After some reading, I found that almost nobody actually buys memory (or hard drives) from Apple. After checking out several suppliers, I bought 4 gigs of memory from www.transintl.com for only $230, less than 25% of Apple’s cost per gig. Another good source would have been Other World Computing (eshop.macsales.com), I was set to buy from them but they were only $1.17 less and couldn’t ship for three days, whereas transintl.com is supposed to ship tonight.

As I get deeper and deeper into digital photography, my demands on my computers have grown quite a bit. I’ve been wrestling with upgrading my workstation from a dual to a quad-core, but I was looking at about $2,200 for a moderately powerful machine.

Then, at a seminar on lighting last week, I saw an Apple Mac laptop running Adobe Lightroom. Fast. Really, really fast. Way faster than than my Windows PC. I was a bit jealous, but I just knew there was no way I could afford a top-end Mac.

I’d always liked the way Macs looked, but there was really no reason to move over. After all, I already had many thousands of dollars invested in my current software and I needed raw power, not a fancy GUI. And I knew that power + Apple = big $$$.

But after seeing the presenter’s machine, on a whim, I checked into Macs again. And I found that, as I expected, their lower-end machines didn’t offer that great a value in terms of power. But holy cow, the upper end machines were beasts! I was astounded at the power offered for the cost.

I also found that almost all my software already came with both Windows and Mac versions or that I could get the Mac version for just a few dollars to cover the cost of shipping. In those cases (like QImage) where there’s no Mac version, I can use a relatively inexpensive add-on utility that allows me to run my Windows software on the Mac desktop.

So I ended up ordering a Mac Pro. For $2,800 I got a dual 2.8gHz quad-core Xeon system. That’s right, dual quad-cores = eight Xeon processors. Right now I’m running two Pentium D cores, which are way slower than the new Core2 processors much less Xeons. I’m guessing that it’ll be 5-6 times as fast as my current machine. What’s really stunning is that a roughly equivalent Windows system from Dell would be about $2,000 more!

I got mine, like most of my photo equipment, from B&H Photo

It should be in late next week, I’ll let you know if it’s as cool as it seems to be.

I tried Apple’s Safari browser last June, testing my website against it. Safari now makes up 5-10% of my visitors, so I need to make sure my site’s compatible. As I said in my blog, I liked a lot about it but there were some user interface quirks that really turned me off.

However, the new version 3 (3.0.4 actually) is a big improvement over the old version I tried. You can now grab any point of the window to resize.

I think the best part about Safari is that it’s fast. Very, very fast. The only thing I’ve found about it that I really don’t like is that it underlines link text and there’s no way to turn that off. I prefer my links to be simply color or bold-faced. EVERY other browser allows you to set your link style.

And yes, I see that my homepage slideshow doesn’t work in Safari, I’ll be remedying that soon with an all new version of the site.

During my discussions last night with my 4th of July bride, we started talking about couples who date forever without getting married. She said she refers to that as “dating you to death”.

I like that.

I just booked a wedding for the 4th of July! I had mixed feelings, since that means I’ll miss the annual bash at Chuck and Angel’s house. But the idea of a reception with tons of fireworks in the background is pretty cool.

A shot of my son Christopher, sacked out on the couch on New Year’s Eve. He didn’t quite make it to midnight, this was shot at about 7:45

This shot is from one of my new D3 cameras. For those of you who are camera-savvy, this shot is hand-held 1/320, f/1.4, ISO 12,600! Seriously, the living room is almost dark here. This shot would be absolutely impossible with my old cameras, it would have required a tripod and such a long exposure that his breathing would have blurred the shot.

I can’t wait to try these out at a wedding.

A few months ago I wrote about the awesome new Nikon D3 cameras being released. Well, last week two lovely golden boxes descended onto my front porch, containing these incredible new cameras. After playing for a few days, I can definitely say that they were well worth the $10,000 they cost.

The major reason I bought them was the low-light ability. Just a few weeks ago, I turned down a last-minute wedding because the entire ceremony would be conducted by candlelight. It would be impossible to get decent shots in that little light with ordinary cameras. But now, with the D3s being 16 times more sensitive than our old cameras, it would be very possible. Still difficult, but I’d probably take the job now.