Fastest Intel I7 (something like an 8700 or 7820x) or I9 processor you can afford (you’re buying a machine to use for the next 5+ years, not just today). 64 bit Windows 10 OS. 16 or (better) 32GB DRAM. 500GB NVMe connected SSD + 2-4GB 7200 RPM SATA disk. Video card with at least 2GB (not shared) VRAM. BluRay/MDisc player/recorder. 750-1000 watt power supply. USB-3B, eSATA and GigE (1 Gb Ethernet) ports plus WiFi and Bluetooth interfaces. Good quality (4K) monitor. If I were building this, I’d assemble it myself, but there are custom companies that can assemble this for you in the 2K$ range. Gene51 has a favorite well regarded custom integrator that can build this for you - you might give him a shout...

Hello All,

I'm getting back into photography after some years' absence and have noticed that my eyesight isn't what it used to be...

I am shortsighted, -3 in each eye, and I usually wear contact lenses.

With contacts, my long distance vision is great. However, close up stuff, which I would normally see clearly, is a little blurred. For reading and so on I usually remove them, or sometimes stick a pair of cheap magnifying reading glasses over them.

Now, I like the idea of wearing contacts for photography, as it allows the eye to get closer to the viewfinder than glasses. However, that problem about close up things being blurry remains. With no dioptric correction in the viewfinder the data along the bottom of the image is blurry (this is on a Canon Eos). By winding the dioptric wheel as far as it will go in the '+' direction I can get it almost perfect... but not quite.

The '+' direction is the opposite direction to my -3 prescription of course, as I am wearing contacts and presumably the things are making me artificially long-sighted rather than my natural short-sighted.

Would a Canon dioptric adjustment lens improve things further? I'm not far off, so I would have thought that one more notch on the plus side would do it. So would that be a +1 lens? And does anybody know where the best place to go hunting for these is? My Canon 50D is not longer manufactured, and a quick look at the Canon website didn't bring any joy.

With my Apple laptop and IMac hitting 7 years old I’m considering replacing both with one computer. As much as I love my Apple stuff I can’t justify the price since it’s used very little anymore. I am thinking a nice laptop with an external monitor hooked to it for photo editing. I don’t do much now but that may change soon. I love my Wife’s work setup, one laptop hooked to two big monitors and may even consider a setup like that.

Now to my question, I saw a few curved screen monitors at Best Buy and could picture two of them hooked up to a laptop but wondered if them being curved would affect my photographs or the way they look? I’m pretty new to editing, have a lot to learn and was considering a two monitor setup to have the original pic on one screen and the pic I’m working on placed on the second screen. Kinda see where I was vs where I am on the edit. Should I stick with non curved screen/screens?