gwilliams6

You will be fine. I also have a 42 megapixel Sony A7R3 and a 24 megapixels A6500 and have no problems. I shoot raw mostly. Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One (which is free for Sony camera buyers) all need around 12gb of ram for fastest processing. If you have more than that you won't really notice any slower processing from 24megapixels to 42 megapixels. A7R3 uncompressed raw files are around 80+ megapixels, and compressed raw files are around 42 megapixels. It is a personal choice, but most shooters and reviewers find very little visual difference between Sony uncompressed and compressed raw. Shoot some uncompressed and compressed raw and make your own comparisons. If you find compressed raw looks fine, you can save some space with these files.

I have a Dell PC with 32gb of ram and i7 processor and it all works smoothly. After processing I do save copies of all my work to a fast external hard drive.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Your computer is over-speced now, so spending more money would be just that - spending more money

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

I am using an iMac Intel I-7,4 GHz with 64 GB Ram, 2GB Graphics Card and the big files fly by! You will have no issues if you do want more speed/power just add some RAM.

jeryh Loc: Oxfordshire UK

All you will need is more memory, particularly if you use photoshop;apart from that, no problem !

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Your computer sounds completely capable of handling files from a 42 megapixel camera. You don't mention how old your computer is but I suspect it's not that old. I have an older PC with an older i7 Intel processor and it handles large files fine. It's got a generation 2 i7. My old computer started acting up (shutting completely off for no known reason) so I bought a new computer with a generation 7 processor and I don't see much difference in performance. My new laptop has a generation 8 Intel i7 processor and because it's a laptop it's slightly slower than both of my desktop computers. You have plenty of processor power, plenty of RAM, but no mention of what size internal hard drive. If your hard drive becomes the bottleneck, it should be possible to have an SSD drive installed so that processing those huge files goes faster. In fact, if you don't already have an SSD drive in your computer, I'd strongly suggest one. If you get one, have the tech install it as the internal boot drive and you will think you have a brand new computer. Seriously. A brand new computer!

By the way, after I purchased a new desktop computer to replace my aging one with the gen 2 Intel i7 processor I found out why it was shutting down on it's own. It was simply dirty inside causing the power supply to start to overheat so to protect itself it would simply shut off. I blew it out with some compressed air and it runs fine now without shutting down.

chapjohn Loc: Tigard, Oregon

My experience with Sony indicates that RAW 42 MP equals 42 MB. Also RAW 24 MP is 24 MB.

lautenk2

You will be fine. Some day all your photos will fill up your external disk drive, and you will want to buy a bigger one. With a 42 mega pixel camera, that will happen sooner than if you use a 24 mega pixel camera (by about a 42/24 ratio). But, external disk drives keep getting less expensive and larger capacity all the time. So, the longer you put off that external drive purchase, the better deal you are likely to get.

TheShoe Loc: Lacey, WA

Do not confuse bytes and pixels. A picture is comprised of some number of pixels and a file is so many bytes. Theses numbers are not equal. For example, I have a series of pictures taken with an Olympus E-3. Each is comprised of 10 megapixels; however, the file sizes range from 7 to 10.1 megabytes. If I compress the files, they will still each have 10 mp regardless of the compressed size.

One component that seems to have escaped notice is the number of cores in those i7 chips. Increasing from 2 to 4 can make a big difference in the processing speed.

ORpilot Loc: Prineville, Or

You Mac is fine. My Mac is 2 yr old now but has 8 ram and I5 processor but the SSD, and running High Siera OS. I was shooting a65 sony (24MP) and now a99ii and a6000. It only slowed up a little bit going to the 42MP of a99ii. I mostly process in Apple Photos and some in Capture One 10 (free for sony) and very rearly in PS Elements 14. I do some general reviewing on my MacBook Pro, 2009 vintage 4 ram and intel dual core processor. It is ok for the 24MP but slower for the 42MP. The 42mp will just about kill my 1 yr old Dell basic laptop computer. So I stick to the Mac and MacBook. I think you will be fine with what you have. Happy Shooting

DMGill Loc: Colorado

If you are running a windows operating system, a good way to quickly check how your computer is handling the work load you are giving it is to open Task Manager and select the Processes tab while your computer is running doing a task and seems to be slowing it down. You can quickly check what percentage of your CPU and memory capacity are being used.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Probably not. 32GB RAM is is a lot and pretty much the upper limit for many computers (and their MoBos). Which i7 CPU? I have an i7 Dell XPS Widows 10 PC with a 4 core 8 thread (hyper threading) CPU. It runs Ps CS6 fine. Sure you could have a state of the art 8 Core or something. But that would be probably over kill. Where you will probably see a difference is uploading your huge 42MP Sensor's Raw files to you Mac. I recently purchased a 24MP Pentax K-3 and it takes a lot longer to upload files than it did with my other 16MP, 14MP, and 6MP camera bodies. USB 3 or FireWire possibly in your case are only so fast and much slower than CPU or HDD or SSD R/W times. Working with Ps as 16-bit 300ppi files they are often up to 100MB and even up to 1.2GB for images with lots of layers or then I create stitched panoramas. They PC gets slightly slower and saving times get a bit slower but I feel no inclination to get more RAM.

Your on-card Video-RAM might be more important than CPU RAM. Integrated video might be problematic. Also from what I've gathered Macs are often more efficient than PCs and I remember doing well with 6GB where a PC needed 8GB. Is you Mac O/S up to date? Sorry I am not up on Macs in specifics. If you are spending the money on a 42MP camera I would not bother with shooting JPEGs. Why have only 8-bit jpg files when your camera probably produces 14-bit or higher RAW files? At what, perhaps 80MBs. If you have a 1TB, 2TB, or larger HDD you might even what to try working with 16-bit 600ppi files and get all the resolution you can out of your new camera. But the files will be HUGE!

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

32 GB of Ram on an Intel Mac? You've got cutting edge. You just need several external Multi-Terabyte hard drives for storage.

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

an I7 with 32 gigs of ram should handle it no problem . The question is your hard drive big enough to handle the larger files? If not you may want to look into external storage.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I'm using an 27" iMac, 2.92GHz Core i7, 12GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ram. My files are regularly around 75MB. I don't see any objectionable performance issues. Copying files to backup servers takes a bit of time, but that is utilized by getting something to snack on while I work.
--Bob

jerrydownunder Loc: Newcastle, NSW Australia

Being more of a computer person than a photographer, I'll echo what others have said about your current configuration. Additional local external storage is the direction I would take. While cloud storage is cheaper per gigabyte, you have to remember that to upload/download your very large files quickly to the cloud will take a reasonably fast internet connection or some patience.