Photography, HD video, and the iMac 21.5

[Hey]

Alright, so to make this brief..

I'm about to upgrade my camera to a Nikon D7000, and I've decided on the whim to venture into the Mac world by purchasing an iMac.

After the money spent on my camera/lens I'm really not left with too much.

The 27" seems appealing but the price is far too high and honestly the screen is too big for what I'm using it for.
I have a big tv for movies.
I have a fast pc for gaming.
The mac is really just for creative media.
Final cut, apeture etc

I want to be able to edit photos/HD video/Audio at the highest level with no issues.
I'm just wondering if I will run into issues with the 1199 entry model in this regard?
I'm not worried about it taking 15 seconds longer to compress a video.

I'm just curious if the GPU and CPU will last me quite a while and do things speedy..ly.
I don't want any road bumps ruining my first Mac venture.

(I could wait a while longer and get the next model up, but is it really needed, is basically the question.)

*edit* I'd really like to leave myself open to subtle 3D work etc is possible.
I am a freshman in college and my major is Television production.

 

[s2odin]

Alright, so to make this brief..

I'm about to upgrade my camera to a Nikon D7000, and I've decided on the whim to venture into the Mac world by purchasing an iMac.

After the money spent on my camera/lens I'm really not left with too much.

The 27" seems appealing but the price is far too high and honestly the screen is too big for what I'm using it for.
I have a big tv for movies.
I have a fast pc for gaming.
The mac is really just for creative media.
Final cut, apeture etc

I want to be able to edit photos/HD video/Audio at the highest level with no issues.
I'm just wondering if I will run into issues with the 1199 entry model in this regard?
I'm not worried about it taking 15 seconds longer to compress a video.

I'm just curious if the GPU and CPU will last me quite a while and do things speedy..ly.
I don't want any road bumps ruining my first Mac venture.

(I could wait a while longer and get the next model up, but is it really needed, is basically the question.)

*edit* I'd really like to leave myself open to subtle 3D work etc is possible.
I am a freshman in college and my major is Television production.

The base model iMac with an aftermarket upgrade would be fine for you. The i3 is a strong processor and features hyper-threading to have the performance of a quad-core. The GPU is a Raedon (gaming) series GPU. The only way you would get better performance for what you're doing is to get a FireGL / Quadro GPU (not possible). But the stock 4670 (I think) should be fine. The i5 processor on the other hand is a big price upgrade over the i3. It gives 400 mhz more processing power, which is a good amount but would also run you $500 more. But the stock 3.02 dual core is still a fast processor in itself.

The only thing I would recommend is an aftermarket 8gb RAM kit. High quality photo / audio editing is pretty CPU and RAM dependent. Much more than GPU.