PC setup for Digital Photography

Gatsby

Not sure if this is the best place to post but here it goes anyway.
A guy at work who's into photography is planning to retire soon and is looking to spend more time at his hobby
He has asked me to sort out a laptop set up for him before he leaves.

I have no problems with the technical set up of the laptop but getting the right add-ons for a decent photography set up is here i need your help.

He has loads of old prints that he wants to scan into the PC. Can anyone recommend a decent scanner to do this or do all scanners pretty much fit this bill.

He's going to need a decent printer and he wants to be able to print sizes up to A4 so the usual photography printers i've seen advertised wouldn't really fit the bill.

Also is photoshop the best photo software out there or would you recommend a different photo package for him to use. His technical knowledge wouldn't be that great so I would be looking to get software thats fairly standard.

Any advice or even a link to a website which might answer my questions is greatly appreciated

leinsterman

Hmmnnn ... there is a lot in your question there but here's some of my own personal experience-

Scanner - No they are not all created equal ... if he is into film then you may want to consider getting one that does both photos and negatives ... negative scans tend to produce better results and you can scan and develop directly into photoshop ... I have (and can recommend) the Canon Canoscan 9950F ... this can scan anything up to large format negatives (it has holders) ... and can do 30 35mm in one scan (which can take a while if you do hi-res) ... if it won't fit your budget then the model below is much the same with lessor resolution.

Printer - I have the Canon Pixma iP8500 ... there is a new model for this ... again the results from this printer are remarkable ... but I'd consider Epsom's equivalent since the Pixma's are not archival standard but the Epsom's (apparently) are ... either make is generally good.

PC Set up - Is he shooting digital ? How is he with PC's in general ?

A lot will depend on his competence and ability to learn and use software. You may want to consider getting him a Mac which is more user friendly to a complete virgin ... I'm not expert on MAC's so I'll leave that to others to comment.

PC OS - I have recently gotten a Vista OS PC ... I find some of Microsoft's new "security" features very annoying to the point of having switched off defender after being asked over and over if I really want to execute a piece of software ... it is also prone to slowing down for no explainable reason (memory leakage in some of the apps ?) ... On the positive side the GUI is nicer when you get used to it. Overall it is really just a con to get us to spend more money on pointless software ... it does very little if anything that XP SP2 can't do and XP seems to me to be faster and more stable ...

As regard Graphics card you don't need anything too fancy for 2D photography ...

RAM will depend on your software ... if using photoshop or lightroom then I'd recommend as much as possible ... at least 2GB.

Size and weight needs to be light for field use ... you don't want your arms getting strain lugging a big hi spec monstor around ...

S/W - Here you have options -

For less advanced users I'd recommend Google's Picasa which is freeware and very good. It even allows users to do some basic conversions and developing.

Next you have Photoshop Elements the entry level version from Adobe ... I'm not so familiar with it but I understand it is not very good when using RAW images and automating the workflow process (if you have 100 images to do in 1 hour you need to automate) ... however it does offer a lot of good features ...

If he is shooting RAW from a digital SLR then Photoshop CS3 is the way to go especially for advanced photo development ... but it is very expensive ... and he will have a bit of a learning curve to climb ... however the majority of users in this forum are using it ... you can get it for PC or MAC ...

Finally depending on OS then you may want to consider Apple Aperture (MAC) or Adobe Lightroom (PC) - I occasionally use Lightroom it is good for large libraries, developing RAW images, slideshows, copyright, tagging and finally web authoring ... Photoshop CS3 comes with Bridge which does much of this ... and some (not many) of the features of lightroom are available in Picasa ...

What camera does he use ?
If he has a DSLR then chances are he will have received a S/W package with it ... e.g. Canon bundle Digital Photo Processional and other S/W such as Zoombrowseer with their EOS DSLRs ... I've started using DPP recently and find is an excellent alternative to Photoshop for certain less advanced circumstances ...

Gatsby

Thanks for a great response leinsterman.
You gave me a lot of info to use in my search.
I never even knew scanning in negatives was an option

In the end I have gone for a Toshiba Tecra laptop with 2gig of Ram, 160gig HDD and Vista.
The printer is an EPSON - Stylus Photo R360 and the scanner is EPSON - PERFECTION V350 PHOTO 4800X9600DPI AUTO FILM LOADER. The scanner and printer both seem to fit the bill for what the guy needs.