thats not how money works. Just because you can afford one expensive luxury, doesnt mean you can afford all the other expensive stuff. Sometimes you do sacrifice all the other thing to get that one important expensive stuff

Also the camera rental cost goes to the client. The computers to process are generally owned by the company doing the work. Big difference. I will regularily spend $1-2k for cameras for ~1 week, and pass that on, but still use our own gear for processing.

"I can't afford the premium gasoline my Ferrari needs."

Pro photographers don't do that.

That still doesn't follow. Having a certain amount of money doesn't imply that you have even more money, nor that you want to spend more than is truly necessary.

Sure it does. If someone can't afford the machine necessary to process the images that they got from the camera they spent thousands to rent, the problem isn't actually money. It's that they're an idiot.

You don't buy/rent a camera you can't afford to process images from just like you don't buy a car you can't afford to service and you don't buy a house you can't afford taxes for. Or if you do, I have little to no sympathy.

The specifications from the client are quite particular, and usually only one or a few cameras meets the spec.

The computers often are owned by the company renting the gear, where the end customer pays for the camera rental.

So it's not so simple. And one thing - go easy on using the word idiot... I work with some very smart people who fit your description of idiot on a regular basis.

You're a professional that clients are paying multiple thousands of dollars for photography and you cannot afford the hardware to process their images? Color me skeptical.

If it's really true, then your pricing is clearly wrong.

Having >64GB is far from necessary to edit any kind of multimedia, but it would be helpful to have. If your goal is to capture high-quality imagery on a $2,500 budget, the camera is more import than the RAM. It's just that you might end up with $500 unspent if you can't afford a $500 RAM upgrade and a whole new computer to use it. There are far more photographers and indy filmmakers in a situation where they have to make these kinds of tradeoffs than the tiny minority making tons of money.