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Thread: Eizo monitors

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    Default Eizo monitors

    I recently spent some time with a superb photographer on one of my Antarctic trips. He recommended Eizo monitors and I wondered if anyone had an experience with these. My plan was to purchase an Apple 27" Thunderbolt display but now I am reassessing this. The advantage of the Apple display is the ports that are available (Ethernet, Firewire 800 etc) that are not available on my MB Air.

    Appreciate any thoughts.

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    Lifetime Member Doug Brown's Avatar
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    Hi John. Can't comment on Eizo, although their reputation is excellent. The 27" Apple monitor may not be the best choice, even if it does have all those ports. First of all there's the reflective screen, which a lot of folks don't care for. Another issue is screen brightness; if you do a lot of photo printing, the Apple monitor can be too bright (you can't get your prints to look exactly like they do on the monitor without adjusting image brightness in Photoshop). The ports are tempting, but Belkin is about to come out with a Thunderbolt hub that has all of those ports. I'd pick the best monitor and leave the ports to Belkin. Here's what the hub looks like (three USB ports, a ThunderBolt port for daisy chaining, a Firewire port, and a GbE port):

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    Hi John,

    You might also check who makes the LCD panel in the monitor. For example, it was reported on the net a couple of years ago that the LCD panels in the 30-inch Apple Cinema and the Dell 30-inch were both made by LG and were the same panel for both monitors. Who makes Eizo's panels?

    It seems like choices of large monitors are decreasing in that more monitors are now HD format and limited to HD pixel counts. The choices for 30-inch monitors with 1600x2560 pixels seems less now than a couple of years ago, and I've not seen any higher pixel counts (hoping for that WQUXGA (Wide Quad Ultra Extended Graphics Array) 3840x2400 40-inch monitor). Or why stop there....

    Roger

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    Thanks very much Doug and Roger. This is great advice.

    Finally there seems to be some Thunderbolt devices coming out. I'll look into who makes the various panels.

    Re. the brightness of the Apple displays, I've been caught on this one with the MB Air display. Even though mine is calibrated with a Spyder3, if you process an image at full brightness it will not have anywhere neat the intended "punch" on some other monitors. I would have thought the calibration would take care of brightness as well as colour.

    Re. monitor size, the photographer I mentioned in the OP commented to me that he didn't like very large (say 27") monitors because of all the head movement required to glance around the screen at normal viewing distances (rather than just eye movement). I didn't pursue this with him but assume it's a fatigue issue.
    Last edited by John Chardine; 12-26-2011 at 11:56 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by John Chardine View Post
    Re. monitor size, the photographer I mentioned in the OP commented to me that he didn't like very large (say 27") monitors because of all the head movement required to glance around the screen at normal viewing distances (rather than just eye movement). I didn't pursue this with him but assume it's a fatigue issue.
    Interesting. I would think that keeping one's head in one position for a long time during an editing session would be more fatigue. (joke on) Or was he an American trying for even less exercise?(joke off)
    Seriously, I use dual 30-inch monitors and I think it is great wandering around images. One can always move back and get a larger view. With an IPS monitor, the color and contrast is stable over large angles, so I like it. It is more like being there.

    Regarding brightness, put up a blank white image (e.g. make on in photoshop and take a meter reading. Then compare to sunny f/16 rule only 5 times shorter exposure. That would be the exposure of white paper outside in bright overhead sun. (sunny f/16 = 1/100 at ISO 100, f/16, so the white paper would read 1/500 f/16, ISO 100). In my opinion, your monitor should never be brighter than that, but many monitors show whites that is brighter than white paper in sun.

    Roger

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    The brightness issue is not something specific to the apple monitor they all have those problems, although if you use the ambient sensor it definetly can cause you problems. I have had the 27" thunderbolt monitor for a month now and its just as good as my dell IPS monitor it was accurate right out of the box. I dont have mine near direct lights but the glossy screen could be a problem if you have that. For the money its the best mac option imo, the 27" dell ips monitor apparently has the same lg screen but the lack of everything else for nearly the same price made it a no brainer.

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    Thank you Roger and Jamie. All very interesting and very useful.

    I have also started reading that NEC displays are excellent as well. All this is definitely a case of "the more you know, the more complicated it gets".

    BTW Roger, my MB Air blank white screen at highest brightness reads 1/8s, f16, ISO 100, so my screen is about 6 times less bright than a piece of white paper in direct sun.

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    John - I have been thinking of monitors too. Of course, if you think "best" and start doing searching you end up at Eizo but at a very high price (>$2000). NEC seems to run next in line. But it seems you can get a large (30") monitor that really challenges the Eizo but is half the price or less. One such monitor is the HP ZR30w S-IPS. It sells at Amazon for under $1200. I have read mixed reviews on the Apple 27" - some say it is great and others say the glare is a real problem. It may depend on the room in which you want to place it. As an aside, it would be nice to see Thunderbolt starting to catch on more than it has so far.

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    BPN Viewer Charles Glatzer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Clark View Post
    (sunny f/16 = 1/100 at ISO 100, f/16, so the white paper would read 1/500 f/16, ISO 100) Roger
    Your statement needs a bit more clarification . It would depend on the meter pattern in use, with Spot, yes, with Eval/Matrix this would not be the case.

    Chas

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    Lifetime Member Michael Gerald-Yamasaki's Avatar
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    John,

    Greetings. What I haven't heard in this conversation yet is how important color gamut & accuracy is to you. The Eizo ColorEdge monitors are known for their wide gamut and color accuracy with the gamut running close to AdobeRGB (~98%) while I saw one review of the Apple Thunderbolt at about 83%. NEC also makes wide gamut monitors (the Spectraview Reference model) and have a milder impact on one's pocketbook.

    Additional options have arisen lately with the availability of the 10 bit per pixel color workflow (I use workflow here because you need software, graphics card (where the 10 bit per pixel capability is often called 30-bit color ), and monitor, even cables to utilize the 10-bit data path). I'm headed in that general direction as I'm working up the output side of my overall workflow. The options for the 10 bit per pixel color workflow are becoming more available but it's a bit challenging to, uh, assemble all the required parts. But if you're interested... I can suggest some sources for info. Hope to have my set up completed in a month or two...

    Cheers,

    -Michael-

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    Thanks Michael- interesting information. I've started to read about "30-bit" colour but I doubt I will jump in quite yet (it's not available yet as far as I know on the Mac side anyway). So long as I can make images to share with others here and elsewhere on the web, and to print, which match pretty well what I see during processing, I will be happy.

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    Lifetime Member Michael Gerald-Yamasaki's Avatar
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    John,

    Sounds like the Thunderbolt is the perfect match. It does have a wider gamut than the others in it's class & price range. The wide gamuts monitors like the Eizo are quite a bit pricier (and features that seem to be unavailable under OSX).

    Cheers,

    -Michael-

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    Eizo monitors are great. I don't have those (yet). The studio where I get my colour grading of my film, Eizo monitors are used. Wish the cost of the monitors were less. I am planning to get two monitors for setting up my editing station, but can't think of spending a ton. May be sometime later.

    Cheers,
    Sabyasachi

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    I ended up getting an Apple 27" Thunderbolt display. It's a LED backlit, IPS (In-plane switching) LCD display at 2560 x 1440 pixels. I really like it (understatement). Never had such a nice display and looking at my images on it is another world!. At off angles it is very consistent and it calibrates very easily with the Spyder3 Elite system.

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    Wow, reading these posts I kinda feel like a kid showing up to a gunfight with a slingshot... I am currently working with dual Dell 23" S2209 on my desktop and I also have a MacBook Pro. With most of my photo budget tied up in my 400mm fund (still has a way to go...) I'm wondering what I could do to make the best out of the setup I have. I have never really calibrated my monitors beyond simple online charts, and there is a confusing array of calibration options to choose from. Without spending a fortune (but with some room to buy the necessary equipment), what is the best I could do to improve calibration on my current monitors until I can upgrade to a higher quality monitor?

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    Hi Rhys- You can at least calibrate your monitor relatively inexpensively. I use the Spyder3 Elite system which sells for $164 right now at B&H. It works very nicely in my experience.

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    Macro and Flora Moderator Jonathan Ashton's Avatar
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    I have an Eizo Flexscan S1921, as far as monitors go I think I got a bargain, I bought it about a couple of years ago, my pal fully calibrated it and did all the maths etc and it would appear that if I wanted better performance I would have to treble my expenditure and even then the improvement in performance would not have been great.
    It is only 19" but for me that is not a problem becasue I use my old screen simultaneously and place all the palettes on that one thus leaving the Eizo screen free for Photoshop images.

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