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I've been utilizing the new Lightroom 3 Beta quite extensively. First thing I got to say is that the new sharpness & color noise reduction process the Adobe team has come up with is top notch. I can't wait to see the final version of LR3.

But this also has led me to itch even more for a new editing workstation. Nothing new, I've been telling myself I'll get one for the past year n a half now. But it always seems that something else comes up in the budget that overrules the purchase. Lately it was splurging for a D700.

That was brought on by a client of mine who wanted me to take some natural light shots of their restaurant. The problem I had was a serious lack of light in the place. I had trouble registering an f1.8 @ 3200ISO at any kind of usable shutter speed. So I was forced into investing into 6400ISO and full Frame. ( With the new D700 I had to upgrade a DX lens to an FX compatible 14-24 f2.8 So my cost was quite great.)

I don't regret the purchase one bit, except for the fact the D700 is now out of production... Soon to be discontinued and replaced by either a D700s,x, or even a D800..... Surely the replacement would have even better low light ISO performance. I would expect a D3 like 12800ISO standard top range. ( with Hi1 & Hi2 pushing it even more ) But the job needed a solution now. Besides, who knows how much D700 stock is still waiting in inventory and how long a replacement will take exactly.... Such is life.

But the D700 is an amazing camera. I'm very pleased with both the D700 and the 14-24 f2.8 Nikkor. It's actually better then I expected compared to my D300. And I was able to sell my old backup D200 & it's DX lens which made up for a good chunk of the upgrade cost.

Jumping back to the topic... While using LR 3 or even LR2.5 I quickly see one issue on my MacBook Pro. 4GBRAM is not nearly enough. As soon as I start editing anything, LR's active RAM use jumps to nearly 2GB. That's just for LR. Not including any other programs that may be open. It's not long before OSX starts using a rather large page file.

I've got this MBP maxed out... Ok technically I could stuff 6GB RAM in this thing, but it slows down the RAM clock speed, and I didn't hear of the trick until after purchasing my RAM.. So doesn't seem worth the effort.

So how much is enough? I did a search online to see if anyone knows the answer. I was actually shocked by what I found. Not because of the answer I got. I actually never found a solid "use this much" answer. I was shocked by comments of other LR users using HALF the amount of RAM I'm using. Sometimes less! One comment stated something to the effect of they will be doubling their RAM to 4GB and will look forward to LR3..

Shiz, I'd love to quadruple my RAM and I'm already at 4GB. How do these folks get by with only 1 or 2GB of RAM? I'm sure some of them are not as computer-geeky as I am. They may not even realize they have a performance problem. And sure, some of them might just be light hobbyists who don't really mind waiting 15 to 45 minutes for LR to batch render.

Personally, I do enough editing that a slow computer means days and sometimes weeks worth of delays in getting the job done.. I'm getting desperate to seriously increase my efficiency. Especially since I do have a day job, and my photography work availability is only part time. Counter intuitively, That puts even more strain on getting my jobs done in time as I have less hours in the day to focus on that work.

At first it sounds illogical, I'm only working part time as a photog, why do I need that much power? How can I possibly justify it? Well I can answer that relatively easy. The jobs I get demand a really ridiculously fast turnaround time. Sometimes I'm asked to turn around final images for business hours the next day. This after wrapping up a shoot at 11PM. And I have that day job at 6:30 AM to be at... I have to do more work with less time in the day to do it. So system performance is actually quite critical.

I do have the good fortune to be able to play with many Mac Pro towers at my day job. The particular Mac Pro I use now is a baseline Nehalem 2.26 8 Core fitted with 12GB RAM. And yes I've run LR 2&3 on this thing. Though My day job's work loads rarely lend me the ability to toy with the mighty towers for my photography work. After all, I'm getting paid to do THAT work, not the work load of my 2nd job. Occasionally I'll stay after to sneak in some stuff. but the stomach calls for dinner, and the hunger headache deteriorates my focus making any efforts almost pointless. Whats the use spending hours on the Mac Pro at work if the work I'm doing is below par because I can't think straight? Plus I need a break!!! ( and food )

But what I find on that Mac Pro is that almost immediately, LR gobbles up 4-8GB of active RAM. Again that's just Lightroom. Only.

So how much is enough for a program in the world of 64Bit computing? I have a theory that there can't be enough. Not until you reach the 16TB RAM limit of 64bit addressing. Give Lightroom a system with 32GB RAM and it will most likely use 12-24GB of Active RAM rather quickly. And this can definitely mean a more efficient complete workflow. It doesn't mean faster render times, but it will mean faster applications, more apps open at once, & faster image load times. Once CS5 comes out as 64bit for OSX, I'm sure both programs will be crying out for 64GB or even 128GB of RAM... The larger the image catalog, the more RAM hungry the app will be.

Soon will be the day we start seeing 1TB RAM chips on the market. 512GB RAM chips will be common place... Ok maybe not that soon. But for intensive 64bit apps like Photoshop, Lightroom, 3D rendering, Non Linear video Editing, and more.... 512GB RAM chips couldn't come soon enough... ( Neither can LED projectors... but that's another horse of a multiple of colors )

I'd love to test this theory on a 32GB RAM'ed system, but I currently don't have the ability. I'd love to hear if anyone out there does, and what their result is. I expect LR to eat whatever you can feed it.

And for now while I continue to pay off the credit cards of my latest camera upgrade, I'll just have to drool over the Apple Store's Mac Pro page once again. That new Quad iMac is killer and very tempting... But the lack of eSata is just about a deal killer.... Drive Speed is another huge performance bottleneck for Lightroom. And another journal topic for another day. But my 2007 Era MacBook Pro is starting to really put a strain on my patience. I still love it though!

Being devious since 2002.

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