If you’re both a photography lover and a Mac user (there’s a lot of you out there, right?), computer expert Lloyd Chambers has an uber-helpful section on his Mac Performance Guide website for photographers who want to learn how to optimize a Mac for Photoshop and other photo editing programs.

Photographers can now use their iPad or iPhone to view images remotely during a photo shoot — if they’ve got a Leaf or a Mamiya digital back. Today, Mamiya and Leaf announced the release of a new App compatible with Leaf backs, as well as Mamiya’s DM-series and RZ33 digital cameras and backs. When tethered shooting on a Mac, the Leaf Capture Remote v 2.0 App allows one or more iPad or iPhone to function as a remote image viewer over Wi-Fi.

There is no live view mode, but images are available to view as they are taken. There are obvious benefits to workflow with this sort of program, since the photographer can move around while reviewing the results from shots. Also, several people can view and flip through the images on different devices, which could come in handy in large photo shoots.

The App is free from the Apple store, and works in tandem with Leaf’s Capture server, which must be installed on your computer.

Apple has just announced the new Mac mini, which has been redesigned with a sleeker, unibody enclosure that’s 1.4 inches tall (down from 2 inches). The new Mini also includes a built in SD-card slot to make transferring photos from your camera easier, though a CompactFlash slot would have been great for a wider range of photo-enthusiasts. The new HDMI output allows the Mini to be connected to an HDTV, while graphics performance is supposedly doubled due to the new NVIDIA GeForce 320M chip.

Pricing starts at $699, and you’ll receive a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive.

This past week we ran a poll asking our readers what operating system they mainly use. Here are the results:

[poll id="37"]

481 votes were for a Windows OS compared to 606 for a Mac OS. This means roughly 49% of our readers who decided to vote use Macs, while 39% use some form of Windows.

Assuming that most people who took the time to vote in our poll are fairly serious about photography (we’re a photography blog, after all), we can say this poll is a glimpse at operating system choices among photographers.

Now lets take a look at what Google Analytics tell us about the OS breakdown of our visitors:

This takes into account all of our visitors, regardless of whether or not they vote. Since this includes loyal readers as well as people who simply pass by, the average interest in photography is probably much less than those who chose to vote. Windows leads 66% to Mac’s 29%.

However, this still shows that our readers are, on average, quite different from the general population. Here’s the breakdown of OS use among the general Internet population:

Thus, Mac jumps from having a 5.9% market share in the general population to 49% among photographers. If we were a blog read only by professional photographers, I’d expect the percentage to be even higher.

Any thoughts on these statistics?

Image credit: Kick Boxing… by claudiogennari