new tethered shooting station: imac vs MacPro

[danjahn]

Anybody have any opinions? iMac vs MacPro?

I am about to buy a new tethered shooting station, and looking at the iMac vs the MacPro. It looks fairly likely Apple is about to introduce a new iMac, and I am thinking the high-end iMac, maxed on RAM, with an SSD drive for system and apps, and 1TB standard drive for scratch and files. This is _purely_ for shooting - we have a couple of towers for post-production.

I am afraid that Apple might not include Firewire though on the new iMac (replace with Thunderbolt) which would kill getting a new iMac in a few weeks, but could still get the same basic config in what is available today and does have Firewire.

Currently shooting with H3D, will probably upgrade to H4D in Winter.

Current config under consideration: iMac + 2.93 GHz Quad-Core i7, 16GB RAM, 256 SSD + 2TB drive, ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM

[mharvey65]

That is exactly the config we are shooting to in out studio.

Advantage of the iMac - Easy to take on location.

We shot a job the other day and the art director wanted to do his selects in his hotel the following morning. Threw the iMac into a taxi and sent the operator with it to go through the images. Perfect.

Drawback to the iMac - No FW400 & ONLY 1 FW800 port.

We shoot and back up to raid on the fly. Having only one FW800 port (which the camera needs to use) means that you can only have the camera plugged in OR the raid drive (I don't like to use a FW hub). This is really annoying but not a deal breaker.

The versatility of being able to take a screen and computer on location in such a small footprint is unbeatable.

You can see our setup in this video...

<http://vimeo.com/11985162>

Working with world renowned book designer John Morgan and internationally acclaimed author and ceramist Edmund de Waal in London 2010.

atb,

Michaelh