Brian

Sorry, you have to do any moving / exporting from within iPhoto. You see, it imports the photos into its own catalog file, kinda like LR, but MUCH MUCH worse. Instead of leaving the photos on the HD and have their locations indexed like Lightroom does, iPhoto sucks your photos into itself. It takes them hostage and I think deletes the Raw file and only keeps the JPEG. So you'll have to work with the jumbled mess that is iPhoto. Good Luck. iPhoto and Photos are evil-evil programs.

You do not need to blow $3000+ then. Look at the Canon 7D Mark II. It will be a big step up from your 400D and the is the affordable option in your case (vs. going full frame.)

I'm going to address the three sides of your question in different comment boxes. When using a mechanical (traditional) HD, that's where the bottleneck is with transferring data. So it's not a Thunderbolt problem, per se. Thunderbolt is still meant for 10Gbps /second (or 20Gbps with Thunderbolt II,) while USB 3.0 caps out at 5Gbps. Of course, real-world speeds are usually slower, but again...it all depends on what drive is being used. If you are using a Thunderbolt SSD drive, read/write speeds will be WAY faster than a SSD on a USB 3.0 port. I personally still like Thunderbolt for a main backup drive for hosting photos. El Capitan has an interesting quirk, on some Macs, it likes spinning USB EHDs down and doesn't always wake them up. This is kinda important for things like a Time Machine drive. Even if you tell the power settings to never spin down hard drives. No, there isn't a fix. It's an El Capitan quirk. Bonus: Like the Black Boxes issue in PS, it's random. It doesn't affect all Macs. Part 2 and 3 will be answered after I have my coffee.

Whenever someone messes with the command line in the Mac OS or Linux / Unix, I put in the disclaimer warning people that this is a serious set of instructions that need to be followed to the letter.

Ah, Photos. The Demon Spawn of Apple's Aperture and iPhoto. It is such a nuisance that really gets in the way, MUCH MORE than iPhoto ever did. Now I've heard the "Default / Easy Way" to disable Photos doesn't always stick, and you have to do this each and every time you hook up your camera. Even if you have used the same cards. Once you format them, Photos treats them as brand new devices. Oh, speaking of which, please...I beg you, use a card reader when importing with a Mac!!! Life is so much easier when you use a card reader. I know it's tempting and "I've always used my camera, blah-blah-blah..." USE A CARD READER WITH A MAC. PERIOD. First things first... What you should also do, turn on the various devices to appear on the desktop when inserted / mounted. This makes importing images a breeze, since your CF / SD cards will appear like EHDs on the desktop. Open the Finder Program Next to the Apple Menu at the top should be the Finder Menu. Click the Finder Menu and look for Preferences. Look for "Show these items on the desktop" and make sure that Hard Disks, External Disks, CDs, DVDs and iPods are ALL CHECKED. Click the red circle to close out the window. Now things like Memory Cards, External Hard Drives and the like will appear on your desktop. Then all you have to do is double click on the icon, find your photos and COPY them to their ultimate location. Then use Bridge and go find the files that you just imported. NOW LET'S BEGIN!! Disable Photos - Method #1: Insert the card into the reader or hook up your camera to the computer. Open the Photos App and click the Import Tab. You should see the device name, if you don't see your Canon 7D listed, again...use a card reader. Uncheck the box next to where it says "Open Photos for this device..." Click the red circle and that should save your changes. Now, I've heard through the Grapevine that you must do this procedure each and every that you insert a new / formatted card or hook up your camera. Turning Photos off this way doesn't stick. You need to do it all the time. *Sigh* Apple REALLY wants you to use their software, they are convinced that it's the BEST-EST!! So it doesn't surprise me one bit that they weren't much help. They are instructed to make sure that Photos is left installed and running. WARNING!! THE FOLLOWING ARE ADVANCED TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS!!! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! FOLLOW THEM TO THE LETTER!!! Disable Photos - Method #2: THESE SET OF INSTRUCTIONS ONLY WORK FOR YOSEMITE!! Head to your Applications folder. Look in your Utilities Folder then look for a program called Terminal. It should be a square looking black icon. Click on it. Now a command box will appear. Some people might argue that this step isn't necessary, but I'm a tech and like doing things at a "root" or "#" (Pound Prompt, not hashtag in this case.) Type the following command: SUDO SU It will prompt you for the password for the profile that you are logged in as. For most people, type in your Mac's normal password. Press Enter. If everything works out, you should see something like sh-3.2#: The numbers and letters don't matter, what does is you are at a POUND PROMPT. Type the following at the command prompt, or better yet...copy and paste this command: defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool NO Press Enter. Type exit (lower case) & press enter. Type exit again (lower case) & press enter. Close the Terminal Box. Reboot. Disable Photos - Method #3: THESE SET OF INSTRUCTIONS ONLY WORK FOR EL CAPITAN!! Head to the Apple Menu and select Restart Wait a few seconds and the screen should go completely Black Before the G Major Chord Chimes, press and hold the Command + R Keys and hold them until the Apple Logo Appears. Release the Command + R Keys when you see the status bar appear below the Apple Logo. I'd wait about 5-10 seconds. The Utilities Menu should appear. Select the Applications Menu from the top and head to Utilities. The choose Terminal. You should be at a Pound Prompt, "#" with some letters and numbers near it. For example, -bash- 3.2#: (or something similar.) Again, the numbers and letters do not matter, what does is you are at the Pound Prompt. Hit enter a few times. It should add a few lines which makes things easier to see. Type: CSRUTIL disable and press Enter. (Yes, this is Case-Sensitive. Big CSRUTIL and small disable.) Type exit, (lower case,) press enter, and close the Terminal Window. Head over to the OSX Utilities Menu, which is next to the Apple Menu in the upper left corner. Select Quit OSX Utilities. A pop-up box will appear. Click on Restart. Let your Mac boot as normal and Login with your main profile. Head to your Applications Folder, then select Utilities and then choose Terminal. Type the following command: SUDO SU You should be prompted for your profile's password type it in and press enter. If everything works, you should be at a Pound Prompt. "#" Copy and paste this command into the terminal window: mv /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/MassStorageCamera.app /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/MassStorageCameraOff.app Press Enter. What this command is doing is renaming the MassStorageCamera.app to MassStorageCameraOff.app. This way the Mac OS doesn't know where the App is. If you need to restore it, we can just copy it back to its original name. Now we are almost done! Type exit and press enter... do this twice. You should see [Process Completed] appear. Close the Terminal Window. Restart your Mac. When the screen finally goes black and before the G Major Chord Chimes, press and hold the Command + R Keys. Yes, we have to go back into the Apple System Utilities Menu to turn the csrutil back on. It's important to do this. Keep holding them until the Apple Logo Appears. You should see the status bar below the logo. Release the keys after 5-10 seconds. The Utilities Screen should Appear. Look for the Applications Menu at the top, then click Utilities and select Terminal. You should be at a Pound Prompt. "#" Type CSRUTIL enable and press enter. (Yes, this is Case-Sensitive. Big CSRUTIL and small disable.) Type exit and close the Terminal Window. Head to the OSX Utilities Menu and select Quit OSX Utilities. When prompted, click Restart. That's it! You are done!! Let your Mac reboot as normal and Photos should be completely disabled from auto-loading.

What are you planning on doing with this computer? If you are producing videos, encoding things and rendering graphics, the i7-5820K is a better choice vs. the i7-6700. If you are looking to play games, the i7-6700k is what you want. As far as Xeon, personally...I've really only seen them used in servers, running databases, used for a terminal server and such. The thing with Xeon, is software needs to be written to take advantage of the Xeon's architecture, otherwise it is simply ignored. If I had to flip a coin, my vote is for a i7-6700. It will give you the best all-around experience, UNLESS you are really editing serious video and doing 3D stuff. In fact, when I priced out stuff for my "Brian Computer," I chose a Intel i7-6700 for the CPU. So that's what I'm buying. LOL!!

It boils down to shooting style. If her 50 1.8 lives on her camera, then she could make the 100mm f/2.0 work. If she is used to zooming in and out, then the 24-105 f/4 L is in her future at the very least.

I wouldn't worry about the pop-up flash that much. Yes, they are convenient, but generally don't produce quality light. In most cases, they are frowned upon. A Canon 430 EX II is way better than a pop-up. You could also go the cheap route, as Christina suggested, with what I call the "Kung-Pow!!" Flashes. Now for the camera body. A 6D is on sale now at $1399. You could get a Canon 24-105 f/4L for $999 to replace your 18-55. Or go for broke and get a 24-70 f/2.8 L Version II for $1799. Wow, that price has dropped. It used to be $2400. Oh, don't EVER buy the version one of the Canon 24-70 lens. Way too many problems with it. Anyway... If you are a prime shooter, you could use the EF 50 1.8 and pickup a Canon 100mm f/2.0 lens (Not the Macro Lens, the Portrait Lens) for $499. This way you would have something with a little more reach and has a wide Aperture. Why not the Canon 85 1.8? Because of the stupid Chromatic Aberration. The 100 f/2.0 is MUCH better in this dept. Right now you need more than just a camera body if you were to go full frame. You need better glass. Period. I wouldn't even bother going to full frame at the moment unless your budget is seriously going to increase. I would get a 24-105 f/4L, a 70-200 f/4L IS to replace your 18-55 & 75-300. The f/4 lenses are cheaper than their f/2.8 counterparts. Both those lenses combined will run you $2148. Now add the $1399 6D and we are at $3547. See how I say the average cost is $4000? If we added a 430 EX III Flash, we are close to that number. So what body? How about a 7D Mark II? It's a body that's more robust than what you have, and you could use all your current lenses. i wouldn't bother repairing a 400D.

You are correct @Samantha LaRue. The more crap you have on the Mac Desktop, the slower the thing runs. The Mac OS treats every file and folder on the desktop as an open window. In fact, the fastest way to speed your Mac up is to clear the desktop.

What is your current lens lineup? The problem with upgrading from a crop to full frame sensor, is that the majority of crop users have crop only lenses. With Canon, only "EF" are recommended to be used with full frame bodies. If you have any "EF-S" lenses, they are designed to be used with Canon Crop Bodies ONLY. This is why we need to know what your lens lineup looks like, because if you don't have full frame lenses lined up, the average cost to upgrade to full frame is around $4000 - $4500. Give or take.

Now with your ART lens, are you on the latest firmware? I remember seeing a few firmware updates fixed some focus issues. If you have a Sigma 70-200, you will have to send it in and it's too late for that.

"As long as you get a good copy..." Agreed. That's the key statement. While Sigma has gotten much better over the years, especially with their ART series, they still have QC issues. It used to be my standard phrase, "Often you will go through 3-4 lenses before you get a good copy with Sigma and 4-5 lenses with Tamron..." Of course, perception is reality. I'm sure there are plenty of people reading this thread foaming at the mouth and want to scream at me that I'm wrong. That "Their Lenses" are fine Sam, you just did it yourself. Here is my defense. In a little over a week, this person is about to photograph a wedding. The type of event that you can't redo. If her two lenses are acting up, a wedding gig is not the place to "test" your new AF settings. Because those settings aren't bulletproof. The lens could still be acting up. So if you think, "OK...I set my lenses to +4 and my test shots at home seem to be fine, it's not front-focusing as much..." and then go shoot the gig, come home only to discover at home that the lens is back-focusing, I'm trying to stop her from going down that road. To not have the situation the day after the Wedding when looking at the freshly downloaded images for the 1st time... "OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!! No-No-No-No!!!! F*CK!!! These photos are all out of focus!! The group shots, none of them are in focus!! The first kiss!! F*CK MY LIFE!!!! Blurry!! What am I'm going to do?!?!! I'm gonna get sued!! The bride is going to be pissed. I wonder if Damien can help?!?!! Great, he's asleep since he's on the other side of the world..." I'm trying to stop this situation from happening at all. Now, it's true that I'm an OEM Snob. I will never have 3rd party lenses mounted on my camera, but the main reason I'm recommending her to rent OEM glass is simply this: Reliability. Since rental gear is "Used & Abused," she has a higher chance of getting a OEM rental lens that actually works. It used to be that OEM stuff had higher build quality and lasted longer, and that's still mostly true, both Canon & Nikon have been slipping in recent years. I often now wait for the first recall before considering buying anything new. That said, when it comes to renting, im going straight for the Nikon or Canon glass. The rental places will have more OEM lenses in stock, due to higher demand and my chances of getting a good copy are increased.

I'd like to add one thing to this thread, for interested parties. The reason I do not recommend adding a 512GB SSD (Apple calls it a "Flash Drive") is due to the cost and size limitations. As camera sensors get larger, Raw file sizes are increasing. Which means space becomes a premium. I have enough problems with laptop users that are constantly running out of room with 500GB drives, (e.g. My scratch disk is full...) so there is no way that about to recommend blowing an additional $500 on top of the $1800 to have half the capacity of a 1TB drive. Even though some might be convinced that SSD Drives are the "Bee's Knees." Of course, there are more reasons, and those will be addressed in a future article that will be posted in the Knowledge Base on Damien's website.

I'd skip this computer. What really sticks out is the "Integrated Graphics." With today's Adobe Software, it's MUCH better to get a computer that has a separate video card, with it's own dedicated Video Memory. You should be able to get a decent computer for around £600. (Which is about $1200 US, give or take.) Take a look at this Dell, from a big-box store here in the US: Dell XPS 8900 While it's not Earth-shattering, it will do the job for a smaller budget. Keep in mind, you could always add a 2nd SATA HD or even a SSD drive, so it being 1TB isn't that bad. See how it lists "Separate Dedicated Video?" if you see something along the lines of "Intel HD Graphics," or "Intel Integrated Graphics," stay clear of the machine. Or else budget for adding a video card to be installed into your new computer. Why am I making a big deal about this? Adobe's current software is utilizing the Video Graphics Processor and Video Memory for a performance boost. You'll see the performance increase when you use things like the liquefy tool and general usage. Gone are the days of just having a fast CPU making the biggest difference. In fact, when it comes to Photoshop, there is only a 5%-10% speed increase with an Intel i7 over a i5. Why? Because software code needs to be written to take advantage of the architecture of the i7. If it's not programmed to use it, the software ignores the extra features. Photoshop is one of those programs. So here is what to look for as a reference: i5 or i7 CPU 1TB HD 7200 RPM 8GB RAM / 16GB Preferred Separate Dedicated Video Graphics Chip with it's own memory. 1GB Video RAM is fine for the "average" person. Keep in mind, that you can never have enough RAM, Hard Drive Space or CPU speed. That hasn't changed, but for the lower-budgets my 4 key things work for the majority. As soon as you start adding SSD Drives and better video cards and better power supplies, the price goes up. For giggles, I priced-out a "Brian Computer." I stopped at $2700 just for the computer. When I'm done, I'm sure I will be around the $3500 mark. Of course, this "Bitchin' Speed Demon" will be obsolete in a few years.

Oh, if you seriously can not trust your gear with something as important as a wedding, please rent some glass. Preferably OEM lenses. I would hate for you do blow focus on important shots only to end up here in Ask Damien begging for help because the "Bride is gonna be pissed, and I'm ready to puke..." threads are so heart-wrenching. In addition, what camera body are you shooting with?

Are they both Sigma lenses?

Those spots on the lower left are usually caused by dust on the sensor. Though it could be particles in the lens, my gut is telling my you need to use a Rocket Blower and clean that sensor. For the crack, content aware could work. So could cloning. I've used the patch tool in the past to remove telephone lines in my landscape photos. That diagonal line isn't that much different. It's all the same theory. What lens are you using in this photo? If you need replacement recommendations, be sure to post your question in "The DSLR Bistro" forum in "Ask Brian."

If you are looking for a laptop, I'd use this one for photo editing: Asus 15.6" Laptop If you look on the main page, you'll see the 4 things to look for. 8GB RAM Minimum / 16GB Preferred 1TB HD at a Minimum A separate Graphics Processor with its own dedicated Video RAM IPS Based Screen The CPU chip isn't a huge consideration these days, unless you are doing lots and lots of batching with a bunch of open photos, or are editing video. Today's i5 CPUs or equivalent work just fine. You also have been working on a slow laptop for so long, you have no idea just how small 4GB is these days, let alone 6GB.

Keep in mind, both of those lenses are variable aperture lenses. As you zoom out, the lens automatically stops down to f/5.6. The only time you will get it's wide aperture is when you are at 18mm or 55mm. You still might need to invest in a prime or a flash for tricky lighting situations.

Just so you know, that 70-300 lens in that eBay kit is the Non-VR 70-300 lens, and is regarded as one of Nikon's WORST lenses. They can't give them away. I SERIOUSLY WOULDN'T BUY THOSE ALL-IN-ONE KITS FROM EBAY! I know your budget is tight, but you are throwing money away. If you do purchase the eBay stuff, I wish you well.

Most of those "Free Stuff" items in eBay are Gray Market items. Meaning NIKON WILL NOT TOUCH THEM IF SENT IN FOR REPAIR. Basically, those items become paperweights if they break. I'm very concerned for this Wedding you are about to shoot. I would NEVER shoot one with a 18-55 kit lens. If I were a guest and these photos were just keepsakes, fine. As the main photographer providing the official photos? Forget it. $800 is a tight budget. It's not going to get you much. Chances are at that price point, you will be renting gear. You could get a used D7100 and rent a Nikon 17-55 f/2.8G DX lens. Add a SB-910 flash and you could do a whole wedding with that combo. You could also rent a Nikon 24-120 f/4 VR lens. That would also work. My 1st Digital Wedding that I did, I had the body but ended up renting lenses. After my costs, I made $50 that day. But you know what? I needed the photos. Those photos allowed me to book another wedding, in which I was able to purchase new gear. A 50 1.8 is used by crop cameras for portraits due to the Angle of View change. If you were shooting on a full frame body, you would need a 85 1.8 to produce similar results. If you had to, you could use a D7100 and a 35mm f/1.8G DX, that is equivalent to a film SLR with a 50 1.8. Then I would add a 85 1.8 for a little more reach. Something "normal" and something "long." The 35mm runs about $197 new. The 85 is $497 new. That's $700 in lenses rounded up and is the bare minimum...there goes your budget. If you must shoot this wedding, you will need to add to the budget. The $800 should cover lenses and some SD cards, but you will have to finance the body yourself.

The cool part is, it comes with all the cables and is already MAC FORMATTED. All you need to do is hook it up. Enjoy your purchase!!

See if that works. You might get lucky. If it doesn't, try installing and running Recuva: https://www.piriform.com/recuva There is a free version and a paid version. Try the free, but I'm sure you can upgrade and pony up the $25 to get the paid version. In my experience, sometimes it's worth using paid versions of software.

Oh boy. Have you tried right clicking the Recycle Bin and select restore?

You are correct. Doing a restore to a previous version doesn't work that well, especially when trying to recover files and folders What version of Windows are you running?