I think you should change better display to displays with standardized color. Pro monitors are for standardized workflow rather than eye-pleasing effects.

A faster sensor, improved autofocus and video see Nikon's third-gen mid-range full-framer go toe-to-toe against Canon's EOS R6 II and the Sony a7 IV. We feel its all-round ability lifts it to the top of the pile.

@cameron2 You make it sound like the OP is against clever ideas. Way to build a strawman. The fact is, there are plenty of ways to bring an idea to the market that are less prone to scamming than Kickstarter.

Adobe's Frame.io is now officially integrated with Lightroom, which could open up some new possibilities for photographers with supported cameras.

@kb2zuz I really tried to remain on PC, but monitor that wold be on pair with 27" from Apple was more than the price of entire computer, was smaller, didn't have adaptive brightness, etc. I was looking at Nec and Eizo.@Optics and Light No.

@Daedbird I have to disagree on the modern displays. The older Aluminum displays were much better with the matte screen option. Once they switched to gloss only screens they took a huge step back. Sure they might look good but not when you need to get the most visibility in details and color (oh and the glare). I heard from a old credible source that those older monitors were actually made in the same factory using same components as the Dell UltraSharp series of monitors. The BenQ's do look great though and will probably be my next monitor when my current Dell fails me. Though I dream that I can afford a Eizo (PS if you get a Eizo you must color calibrate to see what it can actually do for you).

@ Horshack Ubuntu signed it, then what? Black screen by default because optimus driver won't work properly with X11. Even if you can get it work, efficiency will be lower than Win. Look at all these problems one can encounter with this combo (and this is not the end of the list): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus#Troubleshooting

The only remarkable thing about this is that it takes two graphics cards, but if you want to do that, do your homework, because only a few Mac applications know what to do with more than one graphics card.

I don't mean that mouse and keyboard aren't included, but rather that with only 2 USB ports, where to plug everything into the docking station without additional dongles and splitters?

The Animaionic docking station aims to solve this problem by transforming the Mac Mini into a proper workstation. The model supports two PCIe graphics cards and up to four SSDs, according to the Kickstarter campaign, for up to 8TB of additional data storage capacity. The docking station also features an SD card reader, two USB 3.1 ports, Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, Ethernet and an audio mini jack.

I cannot say GPU supported is limited by OS. In fact NV just dropped actively supporting non-windows OS, it is hard for apple to work out every issue and keep price low. Amd gpus are supported to a decent degree.

I have a couple photographers working with 100 and 400MP medium format digital cameras running maxed out Mac Minis with eGPUs. Cost a lot less than a Mac Pro, and they're as fast if not faster (and have more internal storage) than the 2013 trash can mac pros. And the eGPUs really aren't needed except helps on some large exports.

Its so insane. People would buy an underpowered (and arguably overpriced) device and than basicaly buy a SECOND computer, just to be able to keep their shiny apple logo on the desk...

Would this help with Capture One 20, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, dxo, etc.? What would it mean for still photography work with a bit of video editing? Two 27" monitors.

If you guys are not on Win, just do yourselves a favor and stay away from NV. Otherwise, It will merely convince you over time that you should go with AMD.

Mac Mini is fine for photo processing.....only thing I worry about would be thermals, but install SMC fan control and make sure your at 6k rpm with a full load

I advise you to look into sales figures for dedicated gpus. In PC gaming market, even if every macbook sold had a dedicated GPU, it merely boost entire market by 10-20%. In professional market, computing cards are selling so good in non-PC applications. NV is not dropping a big market by not supporting apple.

Just replacing Mac's toy keyboard with a real one would use up one of the USB plugs. A mouse would take the other - I'm not a fan of needing batteries for every &*$% thing.

The new Mac mini is the first thing they’ve put out that I might consider. Their hardware is so overpriced, and so poorly (and possibly maliciously — see Louis Rossman’s Mac repair channel on YouTube) that I just can’t support their way of doing business.

I think mini is fairly priced. Similar things from the brands are not cheaper unless you wait for a deal near end of year (life).

The mac mini's use the intel i7 8700B which is a Desktop chip. However, the difference in thermal performance means that chip will mostly run at about 3.5GHZ (300mhz above base clock) most of the time while a desktop with a more robust thermal management system would be running over 1000 mhz faster at 4.6GHZ. For LR and PS that extra clock speed makes a big difference. So while the advertising says the system is fast in reality it's much slower than a real desktop with the same chip. The GPU in the mac mini is also hot garbage which is why this inclosure is a thing.

Just get a mac Mini. Off the shelf it can run up to 3 displays (2 4096x2304 on Thunderbolt 3 and 1 by 4096x2160 on HDMI) or 2 displays (one 5120x2880 on TB3 and a 4096x2160 on HDMI) and if you want more speed or more resolution, you can add an eGPU (don't need this monstrosity).

It's well priced compared to existing eGPU and TB3 NVMe enclosures. Not sure why they chose a near-unpronounceable name though.

The Natural History Museum, London, has announced the winners of its prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. Here are our favorite winning images.

A new Kickstarter campaign is seeking funds for Animaionic, a Mac Mini docking station that supports external GPUs and SSDs. The team behind the campaign says that Animaionic was created specifically for the creative community, offering it the graphics capabilities and storage it needs at a price ultimately lower than that of the Mac Pro.

riophae: Perhaps I am wrong, but that is not what I recall from the reviews I read. I considered one myself until I found that out, and saw what it would cost to build a decent system. Like foreign luxury cars, the options add up fast (almost exponentially) with Apple computers.

How does the bandwidth through a TB3 port is enough for 2xGPU’s and 4xSSD’s? I think there will be a huge bottleneck. It would be great, if the docking station can be connected to multiple TB3 ports simultaneously to overcome this bottleneck issue but AFAIK, it is not possible?

We saw a lot of new things at Adobe Max 2024, and were able to demo some of the new features for Photoshop, Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, and more.

I know quartz is not x. Yet there are “architectural similarities “. Years passed and paths started to cross. Ref: www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1552774&seqNum=5

Must be sad in your country, where Apple is the only option. Here behind the iron curtain we can purchase many different brands or even build our own computer from hundreds of reliable components.

I do care about MacOS and the lack of spyware in it. Apart from photographer, I am a software engineer and having both Adobe suite and a solid, spyware-free native Unix-based platform on one machine is not available anywhere else. Yes I could dual boot between Linux and windows but it’s not for me.

yet still, apple alternative is even worse: nice hardware, totally ruined by apple insanely stupid "philosophy" (especially in ios environment) , which get worse with every year drastically. i know both of the worlds, so i don't speak as a total noob.

The system "run hot" if you use a benchmark designed to run for 15 minutes+ straight. It could be a problem for running games or processing long video clips. But for still photography, a lot of the work is feast and famine. A quick bit of a lot of processing then not too much.

There is not even any need to sneak in that comment about the "toy" Mac input devices, because they are not included. The Mac mini box only contains the computer and a power cord, you bring anything else yourself.

Above $2500 cameras tend to become increasingly specialized, making it difficult to select a 'best' option. We case our eye over the options costing more than $2500 but less than $4000, to find the best all-rounder.

Go for Workstation if users want a powerful PC, and it start as little as $6k USD, and you can config it to fully loaded @ $170K USD which is just shy of the US median house selling price - $200K+ USD:

Im really not sure why you cannot just use the Mac Mini as-is, without needing anything more than some additional drives? The Mac Mini can push two 27" monitors, and the workload you are talking. Sure, you need to max the RAM ordered, but one out of the box should be fine for you. There are also other external TB3 boxes you can put GPUs and PCIe in, much smaller and reasonable, but really I think you just need a Mini on its own.

You are probably right (there being better ways to bring an idea to market), but this thread was about a product, not about Kickstarter. If I misunderstood the intent of the previous comment, then I wholeheartedly and unreservedly apologize.

The Mini has 6 USB ports: 2 USB-A ports, and 4 USB-C (Thunderbolt) ones. This device appears to pass through both USB-A ports but only one USB-C (Thunderbolt) one.

The Fujifilm X-M5 is the company's latest APS-C mirrorless camera. Although it comes in at the budget end of the spectrum and is aimed at vloggers, it's built around the same X-Trans sensor as cameras like the X100V, X-T4, and X-Pro3.

In our October photo challenge, we asked you to show us the 'blue hour'. Once again, we were seriously impressed with the photos you entered. Here are our editors' favorites.

I thought photo processing (I have no idea about video) mostly used the CPU, not the GPU? You are still stuck with a weak mobile CPU, no matter how many powerful peripherals you add. What you really need is a better motherboard/CPU, which of course you cannot build for Apple OS. But I guess if you are just set on that Apple logo and industrial design, go for it.

Most people needing this should just get an affordable 4-bay SSD box like the OWC Thunderbay Mini, plus an affordable eGPU box. That way they won't block all the very useful ports on the back of the Mac mini.

You don't need a heat gun nor a soldering iron to add RAM to a 27" iMac or a mac Mini. The Mac Mini is a little more time consuming as it does require unscrewing several parts to get to, but no glue or anything.

TBH os x has a lot of helpful features out of the box that really can cut cost and time for small size studios. If you want to set up a real business solution, it would cost too much for the size of organization. Basically I believe apple doesn’t really have much advantage in another setting.

The Kickstarter campaign is offering Animaionic to backers who pledge at least £699; shipping is estimated to start in May 2020.

Thunderbolt 3 gives you ability to add very fast drives that are as good as NVMe, just by plugging them in the back. And if you don't like things on your desk, than you don't want a PC because that big black box that sits next to the monitor will be bigger than any RAID drive. Or you can use 10GB ethernet that's built in to hit a rather fast server off in a closet that takes up no space on your desk.

Regardless, Apple also uses X (apple's version) and I would not expect magic to happen. I totally have no idea why Apple should sign Nv's drivers.

Lame attempt at a troll...most of those don't exist any more. A couple major versions of macOS ago, Apple started adding native support for a range of graphics cards. This allowed them to be dropped into any old Mac Pro tower without special drivers.

@Horshack Nvidia doesn't do a good job on non-win platform ever since they went with Microsoft on DX12. Optimus driver of Nvidia has a super long history of not working well with X11. They haven't really fixed it to date. I just had to fixed my laptop running Ubuntu 19 and NV gpu (latest official driver). Out of the box I got black screen after boot and had to code a few lines to get display back on. Yet efficiency is still lower than that on Win. It is barely usable.

Eizo makes some decent monitors (eg: CG279) as do NEC (PA-271q). That's what we use with most of our macs into the studios.

Have time machine etc set up backing up constantly, but this is a professional studio, everything is saved on the servers (which are versioned and backed up with geographic separation) once complete and it's rare that a project last more than a day. They've been running fine for over year with zero issues.

One of the announcements to sneak out of Adobe's annual MAX conference this week comes from Nikon, which announced that it is currently developing firmware to add content authenticity features to its Z6III mirrorless camera.

so, since there aren't (at least for me, which i use things beside regular word&excel stuff) software available for linux yet, i'm stuck to bill gates and theirs game with the costumers or better to say with their privacy and clogging system with bs.as soon somebody decide to offer some programs for linux etc, i'm all in, this all cloud bs, "updates" etc comes to the breaking point of stupidity ..

Hackintoshes are pretty easy to build these days. For the same cash you would have a faster system building on your own or just running windows.

Apple displays are over rated. Cleaver marketing would have you believe that Apple displays have the best color and details. They are just super glossy over saturated. Dell makes better monitors if you don't want to shell out for a high end Eizo or NEC.

lol, any pc laptop could that (and actually it is in use for years) with external gpu rack (as all software presented here, is gpu based). but hey, it's apple, theirs inventions are really unique.. and cheap, too.

If you need high end hardware for the one thing you can only do in MacOS and can't afford or don't want to pay Apple prices, or want better than what is in reality the suboptimal (obsolete?) desktop hardware sold by Apple, the choice is a no-brainer. And easier to do than most people think.

You can add whatever storage you want, but we just use the 10GB network to save the files to a server that is backed up and versioned and takes up zero space on the desk.

DJI has announced the Air 3S, an update to its existing dual-camera Air 3 mode. The Air 3S gains a larger Type 1 sensor on its main camera along with features that promise to make the drone easier to operate at night.

A somewhat larger mac mini we can configure for work, photography, graphic design. I don't want or need apple glossy monitors. I have my two NEC matte monitors which I prefer to work with for my photography and occasional graphic design work.

I set up an eGPU for my Mac laptop, and the GPU I use is an off-the-shelf Radeon that I got at Amazon, just like, and at the same price as, any Windows PC user who bought the same card.

"it's crazy quiet" - Because it's not running at 100% and/or thermal throttling?"standard GPU fans you'd have in a PC case" - Not necessarily. You can adapt a large CPU cooler to a GPU, which can be super quiet and even increase the performance by allowing higher frequencies.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-z9PidYH4Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaoFh1DH51U

@kb2zuzSo, you think that eGPU is an option, but eStorage isn't? Why is that?Honestly, I think that both are bad. I mean, having a pile of small boxes and a ton of cables on the desk is worse than having everything in a single big box (internally), except the LCD and peripherals, of course.

NASA astronaut and photographer Matthew Dominick shared his view of Hurricane Milton through the window of the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, including a timelapse video showing what it's like to pass directly over the storm.

I'd prefer more than 2 USB ports; a desktop station usually has at least six, with the option to add even more without dongles or splitters or hubs.

This looks quite nice, but in my view biggest value of mac is apple displays that ship with them. In essence, for a desktop, that means either an iMac, iMac pro,, or mac pro with an XDR display. Getting a mini and connecting it to non-apple display (read: crap color and no adaptive lighting) is simply inconvenient.

The company says an upcoming firmware update will improve subject tracking stability in video, and add a new F-Log2 mode and timecode support for specific devices.

Disclaimer: Remember to do your research with any crowdfunding project. DPReview does its best to share only the projects that look legitimate and come from reliable creators, but as with any crowdfunded campaign, there's always the risk of the product or service never coming to fruition.

If it does what it claims it would be an interesting solution for some professional users. I just spent a lot of money on an Apple reconditioned Mac Pro 6,1 for my business (music production), because lower end models don’t cut it performance/ connectivity wise and the latest Mac Pro sells at a ridiculous price for something as expendable as a computer. The speed of the higher specced Mac Minis is pretty decent, they just don’t have a powerful enough graphics card for running multiple monitors (one 27” and three 24” here) and they need more discrete usb and thunderbolt ports. Something like this would make it possible to replace the Mac Mini with a faster model when needed whilst retaining the extra features, not a bad idea if they can pull it off and establish themselves as a reliable company.

I’ve built a couple of Hackintoshes and in this day the process is pretty reliable if you pick the right parts. You can have a killer pc running macOS for under $2k.

Too bad Apple refuses to just make a normal desktop computer for power users. You know, something you can actually add RAM and drives too without needing a heat gun or soldering iron.....

The Mac Mini is suprisingly good. Up to 64GB of RAM, the i7 is good enough for most general creative uses. If you need more GPU power, then add on an eGPU.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/desktops-all-in-one-pcs/precision-7920-tower-workstation/spd/precision-7920-workstation/xctopt7920us_4?view=configurations

It would be cool if Sonnet came out with something like this. They already had the RackMac Pro for the trash can, with inbuilt Thunderbolt peripherals...And, it would be from a long-standing, trusted brand.

@chriswy, OSX's incompatibility with Nvidia is on Apple - due to bad blood between the two companies Apple wont sign Nvidia's drivers. Some info here: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/18/apples-management-doesnt-want-nvidia-support-in-macos-and-thats-a-bad-sign-for-the-mac-pro

The low power CPU, limited GPU support by Mac OS and bandwidth limit created by eGPUs are real downsides compared to a true Tower.

But I guess since the base Mac Pro Tower came out way way overpriced and is still in dire need of some upgrades I think this is as good as you can get in the Appleworld without building a hackintosh

this is a most honest and realistic comment i read for long time, i agree 1000%.in pc world, microsoft seems trying to kill all advantage you can get from hardware, since it is proven, things running even 30%+ faster in same linux configuration etc, which is windows bloatware free.

What's the best camera for travel? Good travel cameras should be small, versatile, and offer good image quality. In this buying guide we've rounded-up several great cameras for travel and recommended the best.

The EOS R5 Mark II supercharges what the EOS R5 offered, boosted by a host of features shared with the flagship EOS R1. We've been shooting with it extensively to get a sense for what benefits those upgrades bring.

Optics and Light - You are half wrong....Apple displays have been some of the best displays around. The aluminum Cinema displays still hold up after all these years, and the iMac displays have been great. This is not to knock Dell, which I feel does a very good job on displays, some are better than others, and while I love NEC displays, there are others doing it cheaper and as good (I have a love for BenQ's design displays lately)

Engineer Wenting Zhang endeavored to build his own full-frame camera, spending years creating the Sitina S1 and open-sourcing the entire project. Find out what it takes to design and build a digital camera from the ground up.

I do see that the biggest problem with this "docking station" is that seems to block the back of the Mac mini, because if it didn't, the Mac mini itself has six USB ports (2 USB-A 5 Gbps and 4 USB-C 10Gbps).

Yeah, I am not a mac kind of a guy, just went and looked at Apple site for Mac options, not a lot there. I didn't realize how few options there really are.

You don't need a heat gun or soldering iron to add RAM and drives to a 27" iMac. There's an access hatch for internal RAM expansion. There are also several kinds of ports and network interfaces (USB-A, USB-C, Thunderbolt, Ethernet, WiFi) that support adding drives externally.

I appreciate the egpu add ons and this animaionic but really, apple, (can apple hear me ;) give a whole segment of working pros a true alternative between a thousand bucks and six thousand bucks.

@chriswy, What does Nvidia's linux driver have to do with their OSX driver? They're likely done by two entirely different programming teams.

At its X Summit event today, Fujifilm not only launched new products, it introduced viewers to its CLAY design center, shared insights into its design and manufacturing, and teased two new camera models coming in 2025.

I don’t care about the logo and don’t care about their hardware (at least since 2015 when they fully committed to selling defective laptops while denying it.

This thread isn't about a product. The product doesn't exist. It's about a kickstarter for a design that hasn't been made.

What’s the best camera for around $2000? This price point gives you access to some of the most all-round capable cameras available. Excellent image quality, powerful autofocus and great looking video are the least you can expect. We've picked the models that really stand out.

@Horshack It is just an excellent example that showed Nvidia's minimum effort on non-windows platform (see all these issues: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-331/+bug/1362848). To date, everything worked still suffers from performance loss whatever you tried.

I currently run my two monitors and two external drive bays with 8 hard drives off of a mid 2015 macbook pro with 16gb of ram. Bought the version with AMD radeon and intel iris cards. Today, I guess I'd have to go to the macbook pro 16" for an upgrade. It's expensive for what it is. I don't really need a macbook pro anymore. And I don't need the screens on the imac's. The new mac pro, way above my budget and actual power needs. I'm feeling a bit lost in the desert. ;-)

I personally like the fact that the Mac mini doesn’t come with mouse or keyboard included - bring whatever tools you prefer. If you’re done with batteries you will be happy to hear that the more modern Apple peripherals come with rechargeable batteries build in- you can just quickly hook them up to a lightning cable when you see (menu bar readout available) the batteries getting low - or maybe also take a look at some of Logitech’s stuff - my wife uses their older solar keyboard for almost 7 years now - pairs up with three devices too.

Leica has announced the Q3 43, a variant of its full-frame fixed lens compact with a 43mm F2.0 normal lens. We've had the chance to use and test it, to produce an in-depth review.

Why Apple can't just produce a Mac Pro 'mini' or a Mac Mini 'pro'? Just give us the essential guts of the macbook pro 16" model with room for two or more extra drives inside. A couple slots for pci-e cards, etc. Upgradeable ram. Or the guts of the 27" iMac with all the same options. Maybe the bare bones version at $1899?

When used with a pair of AMD Radeon Vega 56 graphic cards, the Animaionic team claims the Mac Mini with docking station offers considerably higher performance in a number of popular applications, including 4.5x greater performance in Final Cut Pro X, 10x in Apple Motion and 25x in Luxmark.

What’s the best camera for around $2000? This price point gives you access to some of the most all-round capable cameras available. Excellent image quality, powerful autofocus and great looking video are the least you can expect. We've picked the models that really stand out.

Why are Mac fans so afraid of having access up front to the USB ports? Does this add a microphone and headphone jack? Why are they "hidden" from the user. The SD card up front is a nice add on, but this is a pretty expensive SD card reader. 😁

No because the heat sync on the black magick is far larger and dedicated to just the GPU so a big slower moving fan moves out as much heat as some tiny fast moving fans in the middle of a box with other things like CPU and such that are already generating heat.

This week we're taking a look at another batch of accessories, including fun ways to control Photoshop and Lightroom, and some retro-looking gear for the X-M5.

I thought the same. I'm not qualified to comment on some of the technical issues raised by other posters, but I do know they need to come up with a better name.

Docking stations for laptops have been around forever.This seems like a traditional docking station combined with a storage device, which most docking stations don't include.

Ten years ago today, we reviewed the Panasonic GH4, the camera that signaled the beginning of the 4K revolution in DSLR and mirrorless cameras.

@chriswy - RE: "Apple also uses X (apple's version) ". That is incorrect. Apple once provided an X11 server for people who needed to run Unix/Linux programs. It was not the native GUI, but a program that ran on top of it, and Apple does not include it any more.

The Mac mini specs say the HDMI port supports multichannel audio. But multichannel audio is not critical for video editing unless you are also the audio engineer mixing surround. But if you are the audio engineer, you probably have a much more serious USB audio interface that needs to be capable of a lot more than a minijack. Such as the encoding into a surround format while mixing.

If Apple introduces 8- and 10-core Mac Minis based on the (14nm+++++++++++++?) 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs, then this product would make better sense.

Apple's Mac Mini, a small square-shaped desktop computer, starts at an affordable $799, but doesn't offer the level of performance needed by professional filmmakers and photographers. The Mac Pro desktop is a more powerful alternative, but with a starting price of $5,999, the model is too expensive for some creators.

This is why PCs still exist and thrive, despite Microsoft's best attempts at ruining them - having to pull crap like this just to get a usable, 'upgradeable' machine.

The only people who really need a wired keyboard or mouse are the twitch gamers. Today's wireless input devices go weeks and weeks without needing a charge.

But if you do want storage. you can get some insanely fast SSDs that are pretty small and look pretty good. OWC thunderblades are great, small and look good (or you can hide them in the desk if you are trying to look minimal). The blackmagick eGPUs sit right on top of the iMac and take up less space than that big black box. Also it's crazy quiet, which I have a feeling will not be the case as this thing seems to be using standard GPU fans you'd have in a PC case.

Above $2500 cameras tend to become increasingly specialized, making it difficult to select a 'best' option. We case our eye over the options costing more than $2500 but less than $4000, to find the best all-rounder.

If you want a compact camera that produces great quality photos without the hassle of changing lenses, there are plenty of choices available for every budget. Read on to find out which portable enthusiast compacts are our favorites.

@chriswy, Nvidia can't do *any* job on OSX because as I said before, Apple won't sign Nvidia's drivers. And X11 is an app-facing display API - it's not the driver interface.