Are you serious? That comparison makes no sense at all.
And for one thing, photo editing on a Macbook should be fine. The CPU (not GPU) can easily handle most aperture-related tasks, unless you're doing heavy editing in PS.
I would get the 40D, as you will not be disappointed and as far as image quality goes it's much better then the MBP's in-built camera
.
Are
you serious? I hope not. It's obviously not a comparison of the two, but a "which one should I get with the money I got".
Are you a professional photographer?
Which would you use more? Which do you want more? To what degree are you a photographer–daily shoots, once a week, monthly, etc?
This is a call we can't make for you. Hopefully we can pose the right questions though.
Depends on how you define "professional". I get paid for my photography, yes. So the basic definition would place me as a professional. But if it implies a certain level of expertise and skill, I'd probably say I'm not quite there yet. At the moment, the amount of shoots I get are pretty irregular. I got a ton of them within the span of a week last month, and I've been playing catch up since, so I haven't really tried to get any more.
Those are hard questions for me to answer, which is why I'm asking for advice. On the one hand, I already have an iMac which runs fine (though beginning to show its age a little), and I'm not too sure how much I really
need a laptop. However, getting a MBP would make it a much more powerful computer than the one I have now, making it a worthy upgrade for any future use. On the other hand, I already have a Rebel XT, which though it isn't a professional level camera, I've been getting pretty good results from it the past year I've owned it, and the types of shoots that usually almost necessitate a backup camera (i.e. weddings) are the types of shoots I don't see myself doing a
lot of (though I do see myself doing
some). But like with the iMac/MBP scenario, the 40D is a much better camera than the XT, and a worthy upgrade for any future I might have in photography.
As you can see, long term, both seem about 50/50. The thing is, for immediate purposes, I could really use both. I have a wedding shoot in Portugal in July. A better camera like the 40D and having my XT as a backup would help a lot at the actual wedding. But I'm also planning on staying in Ireland for a week after the wedding, and the B&G asked for about 10 photos to be sent to their mom within a week so she can get them printed out and display them at a separate reception they're having in the States. My budget doesn't allow for me to get both a Macbook Pro AND a 40D, so that's when I thought of getting the Macbook instead. The only thing stopping me is that if getting a Macbook for the purpose of photo editing would even be worth it because of its limitations. So that's why I came here wondering if any Macbook users could possibly chime in on whether it's adequate enough for editing photos that are going to be printed. The purist in me says it's not even worth it since the screen itself is lacking and colors will likely be off (unless someone can tell me if calibrating a glossy screen helps a lot, since I do have a Spyder 3 calibrator). But the poor, compromising part of me says, "Eh, close enough."