5K Imac retina

[Godfrey]

I have to admit my images just don't really need a $3,400 Eizo 27 inch monitor.

I simply do not have print sales which would justify it. But clearly some do (or think they might) or the monitors would not exist.

While I can fully appreciate the value of these high-end monitors for various purposes, to say they are "needed" for still photography is a bit of an overstatement. I've had no problems rendering and printing thousands of photographs that have done well in exhibition, in print sales, and in licensing for use by many clients, and I've never owned an EIZO or any other display in that performance class.

To me, where they are particularly useful is in motion picture production where color shifts between clips shot with radically different equipment and likely at very different times need to be adjusted for a match at an extraordinarily high level of precision or they become noticeable and distracting.

G

 

[f16sunshine]

The subject reminds me of cars.
For years I had a BMW 540 for my long distance car. I sold it a few weeks ago since I live in the city mostly now.
I'm a very conservative driver and never really had a need for all those extra HPs but.... it was nice to be sitting on the power 😀

 

[jsrockit]

...but seriously -- quite a few on this thread have totally dismissed anything less than a $3000 monitor.

Like anything in life... there are those who only want the best (and can afford it) and there are those who use what they can afford (or choose to afford). The bottom line is that whatever you end up using should work for you.

 

[Paddy C]

You saved $44 a year on that basis, and accepted the risk that at any time after the standard warranty ran out on any of your machines you have needed a $500+ logic board, etc.

Put that way it does seem silly. But I don't buy extended warranties for cars either. Or anything else.

As we all know, companies make a lot of money from extended warranties and that, in itself, means that most people won't use them. It's a gamble yes, but one I believe is weighted in your favour.

(Of course, you can also plug your high gamut, hardware calibrated display into the iMac as well. It supports a second display.)

That was something I don't think I looked into when comparing four years ago. I already had the monitor so that made the choice a bit easier. It won't be so easy next time but I use my computer for work almost every day so the cost difference over six or so years is minimal for a much more powerful computer. (yes I realize I'm sort of making the per-year cost argument I dismissed above)

 

[Paddy C]

What monitor do you use?

An NEC. Some of the best money I ever spent.

I design art books and so although I'm ultimately crunching things to CMYK I like to start with as accurate a view as possible. A nice side benefit is working with my photos.

Lloyd Chambers has a gamut toggle to compare the 5K iMac with a wide-gamut NEC:

http://diglloyd.com/blog/2014/20141022_0848-iMac5K.html

I'm sure the 5K iMac display will be spectacular. I just can't stand the reflective screens.

If my computer was just an at-home/hobby computer I would probably use an iMac.

 

[Doug]

...
I have the new one configured with the 4.0 GHz quad-core i7 processor upgrade, 16Gb RAM which I can expand myself later using the two empty slots. And the upgraded graphics processor as it seems to be the trend for software to hand off some processing to the graphics card. I'm thinking some future-proofing here. Wired numeric-pad keyboard, and the 3Tb fusion drive that combines flash storage with the mechanical hard drive.

Ok, I pressed the Checkout button in my Apple online store Cart, for the above, with delivery in about 2 weeks.

I did add AppleCare (first time for me), an inexpensive 4Tb USB3 external drive for Time Machine backup (which tends to grow larger than the source as it's cumulative), and a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter cable to allow connections with older gear.

There will be some sorting-out of software to make sure all necessary stuff works ok with OSX Yosemite...

Doug

 

[uhoh7]

mine is now up and running. 🙂

What is awesome is the scaling. Your desktop backgrounds are at 5k, yet the icons and text are normal size, but hyper clear.

The entire texture of the web is changed--no visible pixels, and that gives every site a smooth look.

The only extra I got was the upgrade to 3tb fusion.

Performance in LR seems normal, better than MBP retina by quite a margin, as it should be. But you will still see slight hesitations here and there. I imagine it will pretty dang smooth with extra ram.


5k by unoh7, on Flickr

Note wonderful scaled Icons on Dock


image by unoh7, on Flickr

above I was trying to show the creamy render on "choose photos" but I5 cam doesn't quite get it LOL

Certainly the nicest monitor I've seen, but I don't have an Eizo 🙂

 

[Samouraï]

mine is now up and running. 🙂

What is awesome is the scaling. Your desktop backgrounds are at 5k, yet the icons and text are normal size, but hyper clear.

The entire texture of the web is changed--no visible pixels, and that gives every site a smooth look.

The only extra I got was the upgrade to 3tb fusion.

Performance in LR seems normal, better than MBP retina by quite a margin, as it should be. But you will still see slight hesitations here and there. I imagine it will pretty dang smooth with extra ram.


5k by unoh7, on Flickr

Note wonderful scaled Icons on Dock

image by unoh7, on Flickr

above I was trying to show the creamy render on "choose photos" but I5 cam doesn't quite get it LOL

Certainly the nicest monitor I've seen, but I don't have an Eizo 🙂

Thanks for the mini review. I'm quite interested in the new iMac due to the reasonable price. That said, I do too much videowork for this ever to be a serious consideration. I currently have a lauch-era MBP Retina, and it's really feeling slow these days.

I might movie to Windows soon. Build my own computer.

 

[uhoh7]

Thanks for the mini review. I'm quite interested in the new iMac due to the reasonable price. That said, I do too much videowork for this ever to be a serious consideration. I currently have a lauch-era MBP Retina, and it's really feeling slow these days.

I might movie to Windows soon. Build my own computer.

supposedly if you max it out it does well with 4k video, but I could not verify that, as I'm not editing video post minDV (i did a lot with DV)

For sure BYO is cheapest option, I've built many windows rigs, including a hackintosh thunderbolt.

But then you need a great display too.

Anyway, as all the reviews will tell you, and as you know, the hardware is strong but aside from the display, it's not cutting edge.

However in my case, the "eyes" have it. 🙂

 

[Doug]

Congrats Uhoh on the new rig, glad it's looking good!

Doug

 

[Samouraï]

An NEC. Some of the best money I ever spent.

I design art books and so although I'm ultimately crunching things to CMYK I like to start with as accurate a view as possible. A nice side benefit is working with my photos.

Lloyd Chambers has a gamut toggle to compare the 5K iMac with a wide-gamut NEC:

http://diglloyd.com/blog/2014/20141022_0848-iMac5K.html

I'm sure the 5K iMac display will be spectacular. I just can't stand the reflective screens.

If my computer was just an at-home/hobby computer I would probably use an iMac.

The difference is actually amazing. I'm going to put together a PC build with an NEC monitor.

and...it looks like a 24-inch UHD monitor is $1300. Not bad...I could put together a better desktop for $1200 no problem. Still, I want the new 32-inch UHD monitor from NEC: $3000...

 

[uhoh7]

Jeez what a photo editor!

It's not faster, it's just way more clear than a 27TB or 30CHD.

You don't need to zoom at all to check focus or noise.

Pictures look like they came from the camera of your dreams. 🙂

 

[jsrockit]

Pictures look like they came from the camera of your dreams. 🙂

Which might not be a good thing... 😱

 

[uhoh7]

Which might not be a good thing... 😱

LOL and now I have a way to explain why my shots look better to me than anyone else 🙂

Yosemite has it's own bokeh:

L1024260 by unoh7, on Flickr

 

[Dwig]

Which might not be a good thing... 😱

So true...

... at work our end results are photographs printed on canvas at rather large sizes (~20x30" to 40x60 are the common sizes with some prints even larger). I use a MacPro (c2009, 8-core, 12gb RAM, FW800 drives) and have to struggle to geld the display's gamut (its a contemporary Cinema Display) to get a reasonably preview of the final printed result.

We'll be replacing this "antique" system with something newer, probably next spring, and I'm considering a basic MacPro and a fully blown iMac 27", likely this new 5k model. Whatever we go with, reigning in the monitor's "beautiful" display will be the bane of my existence for a few days or weeks.

The antique MacPro is becoming a limiting factor. It's performance is sluggish compared to my personal off-the-shelf Dell XPS8700. While the Dell's 4-core i7 is faster, based on benchmarking, than the dual 4-core chips (8 cores total) in the MacPro, it has less RAM (8gb vs 12gb). The biggest difference though is the HD speed. Opening and saving 500mb-2gb image files (common sizes for us) in Photoshop takes 2-3 times as long on the MacPro as it does on the Dell. Also, basic RAW conversion of our Nikon D800 files in LR is more sluggish on the MacPro than on the Dell. It's time for a full replacement Mac system, incremental updates (new faster internal drive, ...) would be too much effort for too little gain, especially with 5 year old harware that runs 8-10hrs per day, 7 days a week.

BTW, has anyone connected a reasonably modern FW Imacon (848 in my case) scanner to a Lighting based Mac? I've read that Apple's adapter works fine for similar devices but haven't come across a thread mentioning an Imacon.

 

[Godfrey]

...
BTW, has anyone connected a reasonably modern FW Imacon (848 in my case) scanner to a Lightning based Mac? I've read that Apple's adapter works fine for similar devices but haven't come across a thread mentioning an Imacon.

Not an Imacon, but I've connected quite a few FireWire devices (film scanners, flatbed scanners, and hard drives) to modern Macs through the Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter (not Lightning; that is the iOS device connector). As long as the device is self-powered, there are no problems at all. Low power devices up to about 8W (like portable hard drives) which draw power from FireWire work fine t too as that is the Thunderbolt power limit (about 10W), but devices that draw more than that need to be self powered. (FireWire 800 can handle devices upwards of 35W.)

Most scanners are self-powered and only use the data connection pins in the FireWire protocol. My Nikon SuperCoolscan 9000ED and Epson 2450 scanners both work fine on the Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter.

G

 

[Dwig]

Not an Imacon, but I've connected quite a few FireWire devices (film scanners, flatbed scanners, and hard drives) to modern Macs through the Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter (not Lightning; that is the iOS device connector). As long as the device is self-powered, there are no problems at all. ...
G

"Lightning" was my bad; I did mean "Thunderbolt".

Your experience fits the consensus of what I've read. The issues all seem to be Thunderbolt's more limited power, specifically voltage, and more limited chain population size. The Imacon is self powered and will likely be on either a chain by itself or with only 1-2 other devices, so power and the number of devices per chain won't be an issue.

 

[Samouraï]

Any of you iMac (5K) owners have an update on performance?

 

[uhoh7]

Any of you iMac (5K) owners have an update on performance?

Visual performance = 10+

General clicking etc = 7

that's with only 8 gb ram, which activity monitor says is nearly constantly tapped.

I have another 16 coming in the mail, suspect it will help 🙂

 

[Samouraï]

Visual performance = 10+

General clicking etc = 7

that's with only 8 gb ram, which activity monitor says is nearly constantly tapped.

I have another 16 coming in the mail, suspect it will help 🙂

Thanks. I'm sure the extra ram will fix it right.