I live in Arizona and most of my shots are of landscapes and the wildlife out here. My workhorse is the AF-S NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR. I don't care to change lenses and expose the camera interior to the dusty environment so I gear up at home and *usually* stick with the initial configuration. Very sharp lens, good bokeh, fast focus. It allows me to better frame a distance shot without having to crop when I need closeups.

Any minute now Stallone will go public with an anti-camera rant.

There are no findings, only opinions and conjecture. No comment on bus speed, swap file size, swap file page size (the data chunk being read/written), swapping algorithms which differ by OS, efficiency of I/O controller, computer language in which the application is written (language efficiency/effectiveness/speed is largely dictated by its compiler and compiler output differs by OS as well as the abilities of the software engineers who write the code). There are more factors involved in computer performance than just CPU speed and memory. Other than the CPU chart no real-life comparisons are presented, no clock time of load, no benchmarks of application switching, etc.. In other words, no apples to apples comparisons.

I've enjoyed Mansurov's photography articles in the past. This one felt a bit gratuitous, especially given the shots he takes at Apple. And what...no mention of Linux?

1TB hard drive is at 74% (I keep a tight reign on it since it holds my photographs). Items are deleted from Downloads when they're installed or moved out of there if they're not installable programs. Trash is emptied every time I see something in it. Permissions are no longer an issue since the El Capitan update: http://www.imore.com/say-goodbye-repairing-file-permissions-el-capitan I should have mentioned that I installed that too. Prior to that I checked and fixed them monthly. I've even reset the PRAM.

Whatever is happening happens after the machine comes up (wallpaper is visible) and before applications are loaded. There's a lot of hard drive activity during that interval.

That's what I was doing at my Mac over the summer of last year. I was cruising along happily with my 27" iMac (late 2009)...then I made the near-fatal mistake of installing Mavericks, a supposed "upgrade" to the OS. The system was suddenly unstable, prone to spontaneous reboots, incomplete boots and when the boot did complete it took in excess of 20 minutes. A proprietary OS running on proprietary hardware.

I was in the process of planning for a move back to Windows when I did a "succeed or die" installation of Yosemite. Yosemite fixed the major problems that had been introduced by Mavericks but a cold boot still takes longer than 5 minutes with 32 GB of memory. My Windows 7 machine at work is much faster.

Life was good up through Snow Leopard. Regardless, as things stand I'll get a new iMac before I go back to Windows.

Next time wink at her and with a huge smile say, "*All* my gear is superlative!"

Ditto. Additionally, I have BackBlaze running in the background which stores all new files (including JPEG and raw) off site.

You've made a good purchase! Your camera will do you proud. Be sure to let us see some of your work!

Thanks everyone for your kind words.

I wanted a valid excuse to use the 1/8000 shutter speed capability of my D810. What better reason than to freeze the wings of a hummingbird? Unfortunately, even in the bright, midday sunlight of Arizona, that speed demands a high ISO, even with a wide aperture. Turns out the D810 is pretty good at high ISO.

I managed to catch this shot at 1/3200 and F5.6, letting the camera handle the ISO which it duly cranked to 1800:
http://outrider.darrows.org/hummingbirds/h4980782e#h4980782e

The difficult part here was successfully focusing on a rapidly departing Hummingbird and the Nikon 80-400 did an admirable job. The wings were slowed considerably as well.

1/4000 did a nice job with only a slight blur at the tips:
http://outrider.darrows.org/hummingbirds/h499392c3#h499394d3

I had the F-Stop at 5.7 and the camera settled on 900 for the ISO.

Then this male Ruby-Throated buzz bomb made his approach and 1/8000 froze him. The AF worked perfectly, the camera cranked the ISO to 1800 at F5.7 and I squeezed the shutter release:
http://outrider.darrows.org/hummingbirds/h499392c3#h4b9d5de5

The whole album:
http://outrider.darrows.org/hummingbirds

- or -

http://outrider.darrows.org/arizona-birds
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds

Yeah, I know. It's the best thing out there, that's why I still have mine (and my Macbook Pro Retina) and when Yosemite fixed the majority of the issues I was having I breathed a sigh of relief.

I should have skipped Mavericks. Unfortunately I'd become too complacent in trusting Apple's development team. You can bet I'll wait several months before applying the next "upgrade". Believe me, for a propeller-head it's tough to wait.

That's the bewildering part (that some experienced few issues while others were brought to a screeching halt) considering both the OS and the hardware are proprietary to Apple. I have a family member who works for Microsoft and I'd rather take a beating, knowing what I know, than to revert to Windows. Mavericks came close to administering a sufficient beating.

Linux is solid but suffers from the same primary issue as OS/2 did - a dearth of native applications. I've run all 3 and OS/2 at the time was superior to both OS X and Windows but IBM's marketing arrogance got in their way.

The Apple nightmare came in the form of their first free OS "upgrade" and was called "Mavericks". It brought many small businesses - to say nothing of individual users - to their knees. Inasmuch as the OS is Apple proprietary and it runs on hardware that's Apple proprietary there was no excuse for such a questionable release. Boot time on my iMac (late 2009) went from 60 seconds to 2 hours with at least 2 intervening "hard" boots (holding the power key) when the process would stick. There was no practical path back to Mountain Lion.

Yosemite fixed the majority of these issues but I, and others, spent the better part of a year agonizing about going back to Windows or rolling the dice with Linux.

Sue,

There are some very nicely done photographs on your site. I hope you ate at the Anzio restaurant during your Falcon Field visit, they cook up a good meal!

I don't like changing lenses in the field. Someone wrote that a shortcoming of a prime lens (vs. a zoom) is that you have to move around more to get the best distance to the subject. I apply that same maxim to my 70-200 and 80-400 lenses to minimize swapping them out.

The 80-400 has become my go-to lens for most outings. It's massive and heavy but extremely fast focusing and sharp.

BTW, thanks for reminding me that we're coming up on 139 years since the massacre at the Lakota's Greasy Grass:
http://sdwind.zenfolio.com/p230249242/h21898d88#h21898d88

Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for your kind words, both here and on my site:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizona_wing_of_the_commemorative_air_force

Unfortunately I didn't get to see any of the big birds in the air. I do know that they occasionally offer rides and I'll be in line for one of those!

I see from your tagline that you too use a Nikon D810. After about a year of being impressed with a D7100 I was compelled to make the leap! I hope you're enjoying yours and its capabilities as much as I enjoy mine.

Thanks for taking the time to comment!

My wife and I caught the first few episodes of the BBC One production of Life Story on the Discovery Channel this weekend. The photography is simply spectacular. Inspired, I checked our bank accounts and was immediately deflated to learn that I had nowhere near the resources required for a trip to Africa or to purchase a Sony PMW-F55 CineAlta 4K Ultra HD Digital motion picture camera. Sigh.

As a viable alternative (for now), my wife suggested I continue my backyard safari from the kitchen window and capture the visitors to her feeder. With coffee at hand and a comfortable chair for a shooting blind, neither I nor our checkbook could put up much of an argument. Then again, things weren’t exactly dull and I didn’t need a Professional Hunter or high powered armament in case any of the locals took exception to being photographed. Enjoy!

The blue eye shadow was a tasteful choice:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49807e11#h49807e11

And apparently a popular one:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49807e11#h4980781e

This “Fly”-by was a hair-raising experience!
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49807e11#h49808031

The getaway:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h4980835d#h4980835d

It’s all MINE!
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h4980835d#h498085b2

W-h-e-e-e-e-e…:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49808d95#h49808d95

Dive bomb practice:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49808d95#h49808dec

Looks like someone needs a bath…:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49808d95#h49809067

Who you callin' a red-headed stepchild?
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49808d95#h499390dd

Life is sweet:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49808d95#h499393bc

The entire album:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds

My gear:
http://outrider.darrows.org/arizonabirds/h49a352c4#h49a352c4