Can I use a Mac Mini as NAS

I have had apple handheld devices for some time but am making the change to mac computers. We currently have a near dead dell laptop with 500GB of storage. We have used 400GB mostly in photos, videos and iTunes date.

What I would like to do is buy a:

- MacBook Air with 128GB

- Mac mini with 1TB of storage

- Airport Time Capsule

The reason I am buying the mini is so that I can use it as a storage device for all the photos, music and video which can be tapped into and shared by the apple TV, iPads, iPhones and MacBook. I am basically using it as a shared storage device for out media files that will benefit from backups on the Time Capsule

My question to this forum is, will it work well in this capacity? Can I easily move data from my Macbook to the Mac Mini? Can I upload photos from a camera connected to the macbook and safe them on the mini.

Please advise.

Many thanks,

D