MP 7,1 Advice in setting up a Mac Pro Photography Studio

[IT-in-law]

First time poster and admitted neophyte to the topic. My daughter-in-law has set up her own private business starting with an Instagram site, now blogging and along the way has attracted much business in contracting private photography and short videos for local and commercial businesses. She is very creative and talented. She has done this using a MacBook Air with around 3 gb of memory. She is now experiencing bottlenecks and having to turn good business away despite working every day all week. I have offered to help her out as a tech helper, although admittedly I am a constant client of our University tech support.

This is her current setup:

Photography:
Photos taken on Canon MarkIV, SD card (128GB, 170 MB/S, 3U)
Add SD card to SD reader built into MacBook Air
Import raw photos (CR2) to an external hard drive I use with USB port (I have a cheaper one I just got from Costco and a Crucial X8)
edit photos in lightroom - edits saved on lightroom catalogue (this part of lightroom I don't totally understand)
final files exported as jpeg's and save on external harddrive

Video
Photos taken on Canon MarkIV, SD card (128GB, 170 MB/S, 3U)
Add SD card to SD reader built into MacBook Air
Import video files to an external hard drive I use with USB port
edit video in FinalCutPro
final video files exported and saved on external harddrive

We are going to buy her a Mac Pro 7,1, 12 core, 96 gigs memory, 1 Radeon Pro 5700x, 1 tb SSD internal hard drive. I have the same machine in my physiology research lab and while it is not as fast as I expected it saves a few seconds on each of 1000's of iterative tasks and that is something.

Questions:
1). Does she need more storage for backup or an online storage service
2). Should she tether her camera or should I buy a thunderbolt SD card reader
3). Is there something better than Lightroom? It seems to be the major bottleneck
4). Anything obvious that I'm missing?

Thanks for your generosity in helping. She lives 2000 miles away and I want to make one trip down to set up the workstation then depend on Apple.

Best to you all!

IT-in-law

 

[Slartibart]

in a variety of scenarios buying a 16Gb M1-Mini might actually the better and faster option. Lightroom not so much - but even compared to the Mac Pro you’re considering the M1 in Lightroom does pretty well; for Final Cut... well you will be amazed. ?
Btw. I assume the MacBook Air “with around 3Gb” is a typo, right?

 

[darthaddie]

Don't get the Mac Pro. I sold mine (was thoroughly satisfied with it). It recently started to seem more like a bad investment as most apps are on the crossroads and I suspect within 6 months, apps would no longer be optimized for the Mac Pro. I highly suspect any future upgradeability to the Mac Pro as well, like GPUs.

For most tasks a 16GB M1 MacBook Pro suffices for me. I own a wedding photography company and we process thousands of images per week and also do a lot of Video edits. Though Davinci sucks on the M1 Mac, FCP chugs along just fine. I would suggest using the M1 Macbook as an interim measure, until Apple comes up with a decent enough solution for Pro's

I am using a Windows RTX 3080 machine as an interim measure in addition to my M1 Mac. I must say though, with the recent Nvidia Studio drivers Davinci and Photoshop perform ultra fast on the RTX 3080 GPU. I am talking night and day. I just wish something close to this comes to the newer Macs.

 

[blackadde]

To echo the other posters here, I think she'd be better served by getting a different different Mac / PC and then investing the cost savings into other equipment - lenses, external storage, lights, etc. The 7,1 is not a great fit for the kind of work she seems to be doing unless it's some very heavy (think: film production) FCP use. Otherwise you will be paying out the nose for expandability she won't be taking advantage of.

On a side note for someone starting a creative biz, I'd like to emphasize that putting the time and money into a consistent backup solution is almost certainly going to be a better investment for the money than a little more processing power up front. I keep a NAS on my network with weekly / monthly mirrors of my cold storage, plus an online solution that's up-to-the-minute for in-progress client work. There are lots of ways of handling it but I find this works for me.

 

[Theophilos]

I'd like to chime in just to recommend your daughter-in-law explores tethering functionality in Lightroom. If she ends up getting a Mac mini or other portable Mac, she could probably connect the camera directly to the Mac and see her shots in real time while making basic, time-saving edits automatically. I personally use Capture One and am happy not to pay anything to the Adobe Empire, but I know Lightroom has similar functionality.

As to the choice of Mac, I grudgingly agree with the recommendations of others here against getting a Mac Pro, unless you can find a really good bargain on one. It seems to be overkill for what she is doing, and sadly, the consensus seems to be that Apple has abandoned it again. I think an M1 Mac mini with plenty of external and cloud storage would make her happy.

 

[mattspace]

Not seeing anything about displays, which is where you should be looking first, because that's the most important part of a photography setup.

Given you have the budget for the Mac Pro, I'd be more inclined to put money into a large EIZO display, one of the high-end ones with a built-in hardware calibrator. That way, you know you've made the choice to have the "best" tool for the task and you're freed from the worry of whether the gear is letting down some part of the process, or at least, you're eliminating one part of the equipment from being a contributor to any problems you might see in results or technique.

Maybe also look at a 4+ bay Synology NAS for primary storage. The computer itself, we're in such a transitionary period right now - the current M1 machines are likely to be super-fast-obsolescing the way 1st gen Macs always are, so treat that as a (relatively) temporary part of the setup. Put the money in display, storage, and input devices (Wacom tablet etc).

 

[krakman]

Like the others have said wait for the new Apple silicon Macs to arrive later this year and spend money on one or two good monitors and calibration device.

If you want something today you could buy her an M1 Mac mini with external storage such as Synology's NAS or just a WD external drive. Remember to get a backup device to store all the media.

At this moment in time anything with Intel in it is buying obsolescence.

 

[randy85]

Witnessing digital operators on photography sets, the Mac Pro with an Eizo monitor will absolutely be a killer machine for her. That spec you posted will be fine. You could also buy with minimum ram (32GB) from Apple and add in some more aftermarket at a lower cost. Processing out raw files seems to be very ram intensive over gpu intensive.

I would also look into some extra SSD storage for a fast scratch drive to work from. These could be internal or external.

On most jobs I see spinning Lacie Rugged drives as backups. They're cheap and high-capacity and you can eventually shift older shoots onto these to free up your faster drives.

If she's working in the studio, she should absolutely tether into the mac. The industry standard is Capture One and this lets you create a look using the raw controls, so that you can see how your lighting looks as you shoot. I would not overlook this - it's the single most important part for most photography workflows and many clients will expect it.

From what I've heard, the performance is far better in Capture One too. I have been on hundreds of photoshoots and have literally never seen anyone use Lightroom. LR is decent for general use if you're already a CC subscriber, but Capture is better.

In terms of things you're missing - I would recommend a calibration tool like an X-rite i1 Display Pro. Again you are creating looks in Capture One and need to know the colour on your screen is correct.

I would personally keep my exported photos on Dropbox, so I know my work is safe if say the whole building burns down.

Of course, the same workflow can be achieved on a MBP or iMac so it comes down to how much they want to spend.

 

[IT-in-law]

in a variety of scenarios buying a 16Gb M1-Mini might actually the better and faster option. Lightroom not so much - but even compared to the Mac Pro you’re considering the M1 in Lightroom does pretty well; for Final Cut... well you will be amazed. ?
Btw. I assume the MacBook Air “with around 3Gb” is a typo, right?

Thanks Slartibart! You are right I should have written 8 GB. The M1 chip sounds impressive! Need to think this over. Many thanks!

 

[ruka.snow]

The M1 is not yet suitable for photography. Screen calibration software, Lightroom, and Capture One are not yet native. At the time of writing the safe option is a 27inch iMac and to reduce risk and improve performance ditching that SD card for a UDMA 7 CF card with a suitable CF reader would allow for an improved workflow until she is on a newer camera with CF Express.

Photography software does work under Rosetta 2 on the M1 machines and is exceedingly fast, however the main thing that kills it is the lack of support for screen calibration software and devices. The 27 inch iMac gets you a pretty decent screen for a photographer that'll do more than a faster CPU. Switching to CF cards and using SD as the backup only(the intended use) will also mean faster transfers and more reliable storage on the camera.

 

[IT-in-law]

Thanks to everyone for the great replies!

 

[vel0city]

M1 Mac Mini with an LG or Dell display. Check over on the MR Apple Silicon forum to see what display they recommend. You don't need particularly advanced colour calibration for the work you describe. Will save you thousands and be a much faster machine. The Mac Pro is a terrible choice for the usuage you describe.

 

[choreo]

I agree with most of the advice given above. That said, I am a graphic designer, web designer, and tethered studio photographer (some FCP and After Effects use). I have an almost identical set-up to what you are considering.

• Mac Pro 7,1 12-core, 96-GB Nemix Ram, 1TB internal SSD, w5700x GPU, Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card 4TB in RAID0 as an internal working drive and internal 14-TB internal drives for TM backups, and CCC backups of the RAID.
• (3) 27" NEC MultiSync PA271Q 27" 16:9 Color-Critical IPS Monitors w/Spectraview and X-rite i1 Display Pro. (EIZO's would be a step up, but hard to justify unless you have some big budget clients)
• Backup to internal hard drives via TM and CCC - BackBlaze and Dropbox for offsite

I usually only work in-studio - mostly product photography with strobes - using Canon 5D-MkIV tethered to Capture One on my MacBook Pro. Lacie Rugged drives as backup and for transferring files to Mac Pro. I connect another calibrated 26" NEC monitor to my laptop when tethered as well as use AirPlay to a 65" Samsung 4k TV for client viewing.

My "feelings":

• Mac Pro is overkill, but gets the job done (for now) - It is the only Apple computer where I feel I got taken to the cleaners on... time will tell. Apple boxed me into it with their OS "upgrades", then jumped ship so it seems.
• I work mostly in Adobe CC Apps and that is the biggest bottleneck (and doubt it will ever get any better). Really disappointed in Adobe performance on Intel Macs.
• I "may" swap out my laptop once they get a MacBook Pro with AS somewhat debugged in maybe a year or so - that would be my camera-tethering setup for shooting. Then transfer to Mac Pro for editing.
• All the hardware specs and speed claims have always been offset by compatibility and stability issues for me. The only app that runs really well is BlackMagic! Looking back over the years most of my lost/wasted time was not waiting for the computer to "process" things - it is getting things to play nicely from different vendors. I will sacrifice speed any day for stability. I opened an Illustrator document yesterday with nothing but a "logo" illustration. I admit it was a somewhat complex design, but still! All I did was "move" the logo over a couple inches on the screen and it took 1-1/2 minutes to redraw!!! This is Adobe on the flagship Mac Pro after 30 years! You could rip an entire episode of Game of Thrones in FCP in less time!

 

[Moccasin]

I’m by no means a pro photographer and will leave those things to those before me who know far more and have more talent in their little finger than I have in total. I have however recently bought an M1 Mac Mini and spent some time on these forums before buying; while I find the M1 MM good enough, your DIL may not. The advice above to spend the cash on the displays and backup solution sounds eminently sensible in this transition period; just like a photographer should spend their money on their lenses.

A couple of words of warning about the M1 MM. Many people are finding problems that their displays are not being output correctly. You might be better served getting an older Intel Mac Mini (which is generally the same hardware as a MacBook Pro but with more space to breathe and £600 cheaper) to get your daughter in law through her current constraints and see what else comes in the next 12-24 months. You can then get one with the next generation of Apple Silicon when some of the current issues are ironed out. There are rumours of a pro Mac Mini as well; that or a new Mac Pro will possibly be a better long term investment along with the screens etc. The M1 Mac Mini can also only output to a limited number of screens and the Intel models allow eGPUs I understand. Going this way may not involve another visit either; it may end up being an almost direct swap of hardware.

For online storage (on top of my local backup) I use Smugmug, which has unlimited storage but also has a direct connection to Lightroom, as well as providing e-commerce options. Adobe themselves also offer online storage but Smugmug give some independence from Adobe.

I’m not saying don’t buy the M1 MM (it’s a great machine), but if you want an install and forget solution, it may not be the best option. I would also suggest you look at Apple‘s refurbished store to pick up essentially-new machines at lower prices and spend the savings on other items (it also potentially avoids the lead time of build to order).