MacBook Pro M2 Max - how much RAM and internal storage for photographer only shooting some video?

[El_Jeffe]

Commercial stills people photographer - portrait and lifestyle. I shoot a little video, not lots, and I'm by no means an expert video editor, which is why I'm using a MacBook Pro rather than a Mac Pro. I'm about to buy a MacBook Pro M2 Max, but want to get a better feel for how much RAM I should invest in and if it's worth adding extra internal storage for scratch disc use. I keep all my Documents on an external SSD so the internal drive is as clean and lean as possible (not always possible, but I try). My externals are G-Raid drives, setup as single volume JBOD's as I haven't felt the need to go to RAID for stills. When shooting video I'm mostly shooting with the Canon R5 at 4K and I don't do heavy editing.

My options are 64 or 96 GB of RAM. I feel 64 would be more than enough for even the heaviest Photoshop and Capture One usages for stills, but I'm not sure with Premiere or other video editing like DaVinci Resolve.

Is there any reason to have more than 1TB of internal storage? Or should I instead look to using a faster external RAID to work off for video? For stills work I'm fine working off the straight JBOD volume drives I have.  

Appreciate any suggestions or thoughts.

Thanks!

[Jeff Bugbee]

In my opinion, 64 GB of RAM is plenty. If you have unlimited budget, sure go bigger, but if you're already running at 100% with 64GB, 96GB won't make you run faster.

As for internal storage, I find that to be a convience. I think 1TB is a great size. Plenty of scratch disc/temp storage space before moving files off to permanent NAS or external RAID devices. Obviously, this depends on your particular workflow but it sounds like you know what you're doing so I think you're on the right path here.

[Peru Bob]

Moved to the Video Hardware forum.