The Mini Kit

My apologies. My last post was directed to first dozen or so people who were saying this build was a bad idea. I neglected to notice the "next 20 comments" link and see positive feedback on the last 5 posts.

you are all wrong. very wrong. terribly wrong!

What everyone is overlooking is that this fella is a professional photographer. When photographing, it pays to have a nice large, crisp screen. Judging by proportions I'm betting he has a 20" flat screen in this rig.

The 17" macbook pro starts at $2800 and the 17" on the pro doesn't come close to a 20" screen.

He also has a nice sized viewing hood which is essential for photographers. All the viewing hoods on the market for laptops are garbage compared to this large viewing hood.

For a professional photographer, the quality of a nice 20" screen outweighs the faster speed found in a 13" macbook and 17" macbook pro when shooting in-studio. I'm not talking about post-studio work. I'm sure he has a G5 sitting elsewhere to do all his Photoshop corrections. It's apparent he uses this rig in the studio to display the photos as he's shooting.

So he paid $700 for the 20" monitor and $600 bucks for the mini. It looks like a Pelican 1620 which retails for $264.50 (without the foam which he doesn't use). I'm not sure what he paid for the fans and the extra electrical supply, but I'm sure it didn't cost too much.

And photographers pride themselves on being able to build custom solutions to their needs and their client needs. And I'll tell you what. I can just about guarantee that every single one of his clients absolutely loves that he built this rig. Not only does it make it easy for the client to review and approve photos during a photos shoot, but the client will see how creative and original this photographer is. Those are good selling points to a client.

The Kit's creator here - Wow! I just checked my web stat's and saw an odd spike for the end of the month. Love the comments (Catt nailed it). To those who wonder why (certainly a valid question), understand that this monster started back in 2004 - when the iMac sat on a half-dome, the mini was probably on the drawing-board, powerbook screens weren't as nice as they are now, and no one was making a case for the cinema displays. I would use it as a second monitor for a powerbook, and it was all about getting a high quality display on location in a way that was relatively safe and quick to set up. When Apple announced the mini, I just had to cram one in there. About the holes - I willingly compromised water-tightness for ease of design and construction. It's never been an issue, but if I were to start from scratch I'd probably try to keep it watertight just for fun. It's never been the perfect solution but it's served me quite well - clients and crew are always amazed by it.

#15 - i was 100% prepared to say that this was fairly nifty - until he poked holes in the box.

That would be the equivalent of building a workign car out of cracker jacks boxes and then, when showing it to the world, you put it on stage with 4 flat tires.

Actually, this is a pretty cool idea for certain applications. We routinely take mini's with us all over the country and in Europe to use as servers during short term projects. Notebooks are a pain and the screens are too small for certain things. I would think that someone could sell a lot of these solutions to companies like ours. Don't bash the guy just because you don't see a personal application for this.

I think this shows some great thinkig on the part of the ownwer. Peli cases rock (I use one for all my DSLR kit) and this is certainly an inovative solution to carrig around a ones digital workflow. Granted the case is no longer environmentally sealedbut if u look at the pics of it in action you see that is ot realy the point. With this in pind it would probably not be a huge step to properly seal the case

The guy who put this together wanted to be able to take his studio with him which is great if u are a freelancer.


I guess the bottom line here is the guy made a solution that works for him that has been well executed.

I also noticed that peli do a case that fit the G5/Mac Pro - So I will be getting one of those.

Hey, at least the CPU is upgradeable!

#15: If you're going to do something just 'cause you can, then do something *cool*...like this:

http://www.deloreanmacmini.com/

I think its cool, i have a similar setup without a case, but i want to built one like that. i have 4 external fw hd enclosure ,
( 250, 250, 160, 120 ) , macmini G4 , and a Nec 19" Lcd,  i want to put all that in a Pelican Case, im thinking of the 1610 case without foam. And for sure, i wont drill holes in the case. i need a solution for the power supplys of the external enclosures, im thinking of putting AA, C, or D, series of Nimh Batt. 
I have linked a setup i made a while back , now its dismantle since i have 4 enclosures.
I think the minikit is great expept for the holes in the case.

Sweet. That takes some skills, it's impressive how neat the setup is. That's the kind of mac setup I'd bring with me on a trip to Antarctica.