As I'm writing this I haven't even uploaded part one and part two yet. I’m taking Gear Talk seriously, literally no one else is talking about what it takes to make a real non-fungible non-social media, non-institution-backed project. The truth is it takes very little to start, but to self-sustain is near impossible, expand? Pretty sure I am the only one crazy enough to try. Then I remember Linus Sebastian’s videos of when he dumped all that money into creating Linus Media Group, before anyone took YouTube seriously, and it becomes reassuring. No one knows what’s next — apart from those building for it, because it’s them that will make it a reality. I’ve finished up the cameras section, and debating if you need pretty pictures for it to hold your attention, and in terms of workstation this is the definitive lesson. It’s been a long few weeks of trial-and-error, and the last thing I want is to have to rebuild a system that is packed to the gills with project files, so starting over now is relatively painless in comparison to mid-project. The other two parts are important to see how I got to this conclusion, but ultimately this is where the situation is at.

Firstly, Nvidia is basically halting production of the middle-segment of cards. Some insiders have confirmed this, official statements say otherwise. In my experience no brand ever announces discontinuation, product just disappears. If you are a gamer that means you play games at a slightly lower setting, simple enough. As a creator? You decide if this is the peak of the market, or another Covid situation. I believe its another market collapse, the middle gets gutted, and inflation makes both other and upper tier products unviable. If we are lucky we get a “New Coke” scenario, and when “old Coke” comes back it is multiples in price. Worst case we get the “chocolate bar” effect — bars get smaller as prices get higher. I decided one simple fact early on, you cannot be just a “photographer” in today’s market. I decided I wasn’t going to be a marketer, or a videographer, but a project manager — one in a juvenile, mostly inflated, domestic market at that. My choice to buy the 5070 and 5080 are largely proven correct, which is good as I could have bought a lot of other things with that money; from prototypes for Discover Temples of Thailand, a week’s scouting in Japan, a 50mm f/1.2 G Master, or just more production time.

However, as relevant as all of those things would be to making the work, my workstations are what is relevant to keeping the work. It isn’t the most flexible of configurations, but it is immensely more flexible than what i had prior, meaning more decisions can be made in post-production. Not as most describe “fixing it in post” but flexibility in direction of the deliverable. When you are “hard locked” on time, or sometimes just efficiency (largely two sides of the same coin), the only option you have is to iterate. If I was making this from the West, a follow-up would be immensely expensive in travel costs, pick-ups would be prohibitive. A domestic artist could not survive with this outlay, and that is to say the window of opportunity I have built over the course of the past fifteen or so years has put me in a singular position. Hardly a position of abundance, but one of flexibility and control of my horizon. If anyone is reading this in the portfolio procurement stage, scrap any of this as actionable, that week in Japan (or wherever) is your priority.

This may be a radical stance in 2026, but I think imaging has regressed to superficialities. For the most part, I believe that once the camera and lens part of the equation is resolved (pun slightly intended), and yes it can be resolved, capture becomes a miniscule part of photography. The term “Digital Darkroom” is largely a misnomer, as I think it is far more than that, and in some ways far less. I do think we have reached a point where AI interpolation has become good enough to constitute as a successor to enlargement, but I (and my school of Philosophic Documentarianism) believes that a photograph is the data captured by the sensor, and anything more begins to take it from the realm of photography into digital manipulation. I believe what I do in particular to be authentic, with monochrome conversions a selection of wavelengths captured by the sensor, an interpretation of the data not alteration of the image. I largely and publicly disagree that the image itself is a product solely of the camera, and a strong advocate of ethical post-production. Otherwise, wouldn’t we all be still shooting positives?

Yamato & Musashi

I’m not usually one to name my things, I have never named a car, a bike, or a camera, but I felt the need to name my two computers. Initially inspired by Space Battleship Yamato, released in 1974 (and a whole five years prior to Tomino-sensei’s Mobile Suit Gundam), it is a story of how in a last ditch attempt some scrappy folks on Earth repurposed the naval battleship Yamato for intergalactic travel. It seemed fitting, I was asking my computer to do something it was never intended to do, and I was upgrading it in a time where [generally] nothing is available, rather fitting. At least until I decided to build out the second, and the only name that was suitable was obviously Musashi, the sister-dreadnaught. What becomes eerily prophetic is how both builds mirror the production of the original vessels so closely, it gives me goosebumps. Musashi was always meant for reserve duties, and Yamato the flagship, the bearer of the Rising Sun, dominator of the Pacific. What happened was Yamato, by virtue of being first, was restricted in it’s construction. In all accounts it was the flagship intended, but Musashi was able to learn from Yamato, retrofitted and adaptable.

Let us take a refresher on what system I was using between early 2023 and late 2025:

Motherboard: Asus TUF Z790-P WIFI DDR4

CPU: Intel i7 13700

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master 240mm AIO

GPU: Asus TUF 3060 12GB

RAM: Corsair Vengance 32GB 3200 (2x16GB)

SSD: 1TB WD Black SN720 x2

PSU: Thermaltake Tough Power 850W Gold (Modular)

Cooling: Thermaltake 120mm x3 (intake) & 120mm (exhaust)

Chassis: Thermaltake V250

This is not going to be a spec list buy this article, or a product review. It will be something much more useful, transparency. This is the setup that I was using for a few different things initially, mainly because transfers were becoming impossible on the MacBook Pro, even on a normal 35c day here in Thailand, the machine would overheat. It meant any post-hoc backing up was virtually impossible, data management, archive management, not hard, not stressful, but impossible. This was post pandemic shortages Udon Thani, in a country where returns don’t exist, the mail is the wild west and you can forget importing anything. Depending on how you look at it, I was lucky that I got anything at all, or short-sighted in that I didn’t optimise. Either way, speculation remains unhelpful as the truth is it was the system that I had, the system that was available, and more importantly; the system that I used to produce multiple projects, maintain DRobertsPhoto.com, and use through my editorial contributions (that number over twenty, with seven optical manufacturer collaborations). This is Yamato, named recently when repurposed to handle Discover, and both the data-vault of 60 megapixel RAW files that the project is producing along with H.265 4:2:2 motion companion pieces — and separate experimentation in extremely costly (as in performative cost, not financial) applications.

These were the two workstations as I entered into 2026:

Yamato

Motherboard: Asus TUF Z790-Plus WIFI DDR4

CPU: Intel i7 13700 (-0.07 offset)

CPU Cooler: Corsair Nautilus 240

GPU: Asus TUF 5070 12GB

RAM: Corsair Vengance 64GB 3200 (4x16GB)

SSD: 1TB WD Black SN720 x2 2TB WD Black SN850 x2

PSU: Be Quiet! 1000W Gold (Modular)

Cooling: Be Quiet! Pure Wings 120mm x3 (intake) & 140mm x1 (exhaust)

Chassis: BeQuiet! Pure Base 501

Musashi:

Motherboard: Asus TUF B760M-Plus WIFI DDR5

CPU: Intel i5 12400

CPU Cooler: Be Quiet! Pure Rock Pro 3

GPU: Asus TUF 3060 12GB

RAM: Corsair 32GB 6000 DDR5

SSD: 2TB Kingston NV2

PSU: Thermaltake Tough Power 850W Gold (Modular)

Cooling: Thermaltake 120mm x3 (intake) & 120mm (exhaust)

Chassis: Thermaltake V250

With Dararat taking the lead on the Dehancer collaboration (see here), it is clear that DRobertsPhoto is growing in the ways that I want it to. To support and nurture this, like a plant, it needs to be watered. I could have easily just built a singular “hero” system for my own use, and come in at around the same cost but the idea was to iterate enough that Yamato would be in fighting condition, and what was left over could be supplemented by a comparatively small purchase to create a second workstation. In theory , a good idea. In practice, a capable low-cost machine was built if working from proxies. In use? A headache. Proxies are industry standard for motion, that much is undisputable but the only real benefit that comes with independence is agility, and proxies add friction between capture and edit. Motion is still in the early stages and heavily reliant on iteration, and when things become difficult the willingness to try disappears. iteration becomes a chore, and it becomes toxic for future development.