Suggestions for LCD monitor?
Well, my Lacie Blue CRT is beginning to die and the prognosis does not look good. I've held off buying an LCD monitor as the good ones were terribly expensive and the cheaper ones lacked the necessary adjustments and had display issues.
Since the CRT is now yesterday's monitor, does anyone have advice on a decent LCD in the 20-22" range that won't break the bank?
Please let me know what you are using and what you like and don't like about them.
The new Apple Cinema displays are superb.
24":
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB...mco=Mjc5MTYwMQ
30":
http://store.apple.com/us/product/M9...mco=MjE0NTg4OA
You didn't say if PC or Apple. If PC, the new Apple 24" will not work. It does not have the proper connection for PC's. The 30" does. If you want to get serious about a color managed workflow at a reasonable cost with monitors that can achieve 75% - 97% of the Adobe RGB gammet (depending on the model), check out the NEC Spectraview II's. They also come with their own calibration software and calibration sensor.
http://www.necdisplay.com/Products/S...e-c23e8b085ed7
I didn't realise this Chris but I can't imagine there is not a converter that would not work. Surely the 24" provides a digital input plug that can be made to fit the digital or analog out of a pc??
John,Originally Posted by John Chardine
From what I have read the current 24" from Apple has some new wierd Apple only plug designed to fit some of the recent macBook Pro models. Any adapter will eventually come from Apple...which means it will be $$$
Sorry - I should have mentioned that I'm using a PC!
The Apple 30" monitor is really nice and will work for you...but it is pricey
Jim, ideally if you are doing image work on your monitor look for a S-IPS/H-IPS based monitor (if you don't know LCD types go here: http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides...anel-types.php,) . I know you said a 20"-22" but the 24" HP LP2475W is very good - though in the $600 range (the best LCD under $800).
For a 22" look at the Dell 2209WA which is in the $300 range, is IPS and will do a good job if properly calibrated.
Thanks for starting this thread Jim. I'm in the same boat as you, and have been doing a lot of research trying to find a good, and reasonably priced monitor. rnclark's website has a good explanation of the different monitor technologies (http://www.clarkvision.com/photoinfo...tor/index.html). As Kevin mentioned, the S-IPS monitors are the best choice for photo-editing (and the most expensive). The S-IPS are beyond what I want to spend on a monitor, except for the very new Dell 2209WA. This is e-IPS instead of S-IPS. I'm not sure what the difference is besides the e-IPS being much less expensive. It's going for $370 CAN. I'm just kicking myself because two weeks ago I missed a 24 hour sale Dell had (US and Can) where they were selling them for $250 including shipping!
Wide gamut is a double edged sword. While the wide gamut monitors are more accurate in deeply saturated colors, they're also taking up more of your available bits to represent those colors. That leaves less available bits for less saturated colors. I vaguely recall the full aRGB monitor using 8 bit per channel can be off by as much as 4 deltaE in the skin tone region. (Can't remember exactly where I read it, but it's probably from the Karl Lang, who was the lead guy for Sony Artisan)
This problem is inherent in the 8-bit per channel color pipeline. These days, there are monitors, e.g. HP DreamColor, that takes 10-bit per channel input and have at least 10-bits all the way down the chain. But as far as I know, neither Windows nor Mac supports more than 8-bit per channel to the display. So until Windows 7 comes out, the problem has no fix.
And back to the NEC SpectraView calibration, the situation is somewhat confusing. It has a software component and a hardware component. The standard hardware is a rebadged Eye-One Display 2. If your existing calibration puck is supported by the software, you supposedly can just buy the software only.
But the User Guide for the software mentions something called Eye-One Display 2 WG. And it says for wide gamut monitors, you can only trust the color primaries reported by the Eye-One Display 2 WG or a spectrophotometer like Eye-One Pro. Now if you can't trust the primaries from a regular colorimeter, how on earth can you calibrate the monitor properly with one of those? And if you go over to Eye-One, there is no such thing as an Eye-One Display 2 WG--looks like it's made specially for NEC. So unless you have a spectro like Eye-One Pro, you pretty much are stuck with the full SpectraView package with an NEC wide gamut monitor. Existing calibration pucks can't be reused.
Andy
I don't mind spending $600 - $700 for a decent monitor, but right now can't justify $1000+! I already have a calibration system - but there such great information here so far that it is going to take me a bit of time to process it all! Thanks to everyone who contributed so far!
Don't want to hijack this interesting thread but I was wondering how important the graphics card that drives the monitor is?
In the old days with CRT monitors, the signal from the computer to the display is analog. So to calibrate the monitor, all you need to do is to load up the translation table in the video card. If the translation table in the card has 10-bits per channel and the card's D/A converter is 10-bits per channel, your calibration would be quite seamless.
These days, most LCD monitors have 8-bit per channel DVI connection. 8-bit is 256 possible values. If you try to remap with only 256 possible values, you're also guaranteed to lose some of the steps in the end. In severe cases (e.g. on bad laptops), that would cause banding or irregular patches. To get around that, you need to leave the translation table in the video card alone and play with the table in the monitor instead. Many monitors don't allow that. And for those that do, there is no standard way of doing it as far as I know. Thus the need for proprietary calibration software like the NEC SpectraView, unfortunately...
My understanding is that the quality of the analog video stage used to be important in the CRT days. These days, I'd imagine any card would be fine as long as it provides that right output format and physical connection to your display.
And of course, the display driver needs to be working properly too. I'm currently using an ancient Radeon X1600 Pro AGP card. Photoshop CS4 became usable in GPU mode only in the past week after the latest Catalyst 9.2 driver was released. Before, it was hanging left right center. It still hangs in quick mask mode in fact, but at least it's fine most of the time now...
Andy
Hi Guys.
The Dell 30" monitors reported;y use the same LG panel and the Apple Cinema displays. So you can save a lot of money.
Really avoid TN monitors at any cost (I just edited this--I mistakenly said IPS and didn't read what I wrote--sorry for any confusion). If you move your head up and down the contrast and color changes. If you calibrate it, you would need to construct a stand some distance away and use binoculars to view the screen from only one position if you really wanted accurate color and contrast.;) If you are viewing a IPS monitor up close. then the contrast and color at the top of the screen is different than at the middle and way different than at the bottom. Here is my info on choosing an LCD monitor. Personally, I do see a trend is LCDs getting better, and the new LED backlit displays are intriguing, having a continuous and smooth spectrum as the light source as opposed to the emission line spectrum of fluorescent lit screens. I don't know of a large LED S-IPS screen, but then I haven't been looking.
Here is my article on choosing LCDs:
http://www.clarkvision.com/photoinfo...tor/index.html
But I am hoping for a higher resolution screen. My 30" monitors are 1600 x 2560 which is wonderful, but now I want a 40-inch 10 megapixel LCD. I know, it doesn't exist. But when you do see one, please alert me! ;);)
Last edited by Roger Clark; 03-26-2009 at 05:45 PM.
Just the opposite. LED backlit monitors essentially have one huge spike for each primary color in the spectrum and very little else. It's the total lack of secondary spikes that make the primaries on those monitors so pure and be able to handle deeply saturated colors.
Samsung XL series has a 30" model I think. And HP supposedly is going to introduce a 30" DreamColor.I don't know of a large LED S-IPS screen, but then I haven't been looking.
Andy
Use and recommend Apple but have seen some great monitors form Dell Would check them out !! ... highly recommend going to a 30 !!
There is a big difference between the emission lines of fluorescent lights and an LED. LEDs are relatively broad band compared the atomic emission lines.
Some LED LCDs have great color gamut. e.g.:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/sections/news...x?NewsId=14519
Or ow about a 6-color system:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/lo...hDecision=-203
Or:
"Quantitative Comparison of Color Performances Between IPS and MVA LCDs
Lu, R.; Hong, Q.; Wu, S.-T.; Peng, K.-H.; Hsieh, H.-S.
Display Technology, Journal of
Volume 2, Issue 4, Dec. 2006 Page(s):319 - 326
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JDT.2006.885158
Summary:Color gamut and color shifts of the film-compensated multi-domain in-plane-switching (IPS) and multi-domain vertical alignment (MVA) liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are calculated quantitatively using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and cold-cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlight. Simulation results indicate that the LED backlight exhibits better angular color uniformity and smaller color shifts than CCFL. In addition, the color gamut can be further widened and the color shift reduced when using color-sequential RGB-LED backlight without color filters. In general, both IPS and MVA LCDs show relatively small color shift under different backlights, but MVA has a lower color shift using the optimized uniaxial compensation films"
from:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/lo...hDecision=-203
I should have said "Graphics grade LED backlit monitors usually have one big hump around each primary and very little else". Sorry.
Interestingly enough, this one has exactly 3 big humps...
Andy
I haven't used any that I will recommend but I gather a lot of information from this site regarding LCD monitors.
http://www.digitalversus.com/
Here is a very recent article:
http://www.digitalversus.com/news_id-8194.html
From what I've seen there and read at other forums I would suggest:
Eizo is the leader (but pricey) ;
Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP
Dell 2209WA
Hope this helps.
Well, I can see it is going to take me some time to digest all this great information! Thanks everyone! I've bookmarked Mike Clark's site and I'm going to study the great information he has there. I'll have to do some head scratching over the 30" displays as well - I have a corner arranged working space and I'm not sure if my computer desk has room for a 30" display - but I'm certainly going to consider a larger display if I can find one at the right price. I have a Dell XPS M1330 laptop with the LED backlights and find the colors and contrast to be amazing (even at 13").
Jim,
One thing to check. See if your graphics card supports 30-inch monitors. If not and you have to upgrade, then you must check if your power supply can support the new card. Cards that support 30-inch monitors take a lot of power, which is needed for the speed required for processing video and games. But WOW the images are stunning (I have 1 30-inch monitor at home and 3 at work).
Once lower power LED backlit 30-inch displays come out (or larger), with lower power requirements, I can see putting thee on the wall for picture display and forget making prints.
And, of course, bigger is better....where is that 40-inch 20 megapixel monitor?
Hi Mike - I will keep an eye open (literally!) for that 40 inch 20MP monitor! I know my graphics card is about 18 months old, but was a higher end GeForce card - I'll have to check to see if it will support a 30" - thanks for the heads-up!!
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