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Monitor Suggestion needed!
JamesCroftPhotography
Registered Users Posts: 30 Big grins
Ok, so my dilemma is simple: I'm moving to a desktop from a laptop, and I need to find a good monitor that isn't going to empty my bank account. I've been trying to do some research, but there are roughly 10 gajillion monitors out there. Obviously I need something with consistent color replication and a decent size. Any suggestions anyone? Please?
Tim
James Croft Photography
http://www.JamesCroftPhotography.com
Photography makes life worth living, or at least makes it more attractive.
James Croft Photography
http://www.JamesCroftPhotography.com
Photography makes life worth living, or at least makes it more attractive.
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www.leefortier.com
Carry on.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/42003
Can you live with a monitor whose color gamut covers only the standard sRGB color space or do you need a "wide gamut" monitors whose gamut covers both the sRGB and AdobeRGB color space?
FYI... Lightroom's default and unchangeable working color space is PRoPhotoRGB.
If you do your own printing on a better quality multi-ink printer and want to try to match screen to printer a "wide gamut" monitor would be better.
If all you're doing is editing images to upload to Smugmug or you send them out to an off-site printer, then all you need is sRGB. Most online photo web sites only accept images tagged for the sRGB space and most off-site printers only accept sRGB images.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Colorspace.png
There is a list of quality budget monitors in this post...
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1488494&postcount=2
and these threads...
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=182179
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=178724
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=172597
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Here are some tips on what to look for when selecting a LCD monitor where the majority of the time spent with it will be for image editing and viewing. If you're looking for a Gaming or TV/Video monitor, this guide is not for you.
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TFT LCD Panels
In terms of image quality for photo editing, these are the TFT LCD panel types from best to worst:
IPS (newer variants are S-IPS, AS-IPS, H-IPS, e-IPS, etc)
PVA (newer variants are S-PVA, c-PVA)
MVA (newer variants are A-MVA, P-MVA, S-MVA, etc)
TN
If you would like some background on these panels, read this article:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/panel_technologies.htm
IMHO, current IPS and PVA monitors can be very close in image quality with units from the top tier manufacturers; IPS do show more detail in dark areas of an image but a number of users are finding that middle to low end IPS panels show unwanted "tinting" noticeable on white or gray backgrounds. Others object to the anti-reflection treatment on the matte screens of some IPS monitors (gives a "dirty" appearance) but most users get used to this.
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Viewing Angles
IPS and PVA are preferred because, typically, when you look at the screen from where you sit while editing, the gamma/color does not shift noticeably at the edges of the screen. With a TN panel the gamma/color shift is noticeable both at the sides and top and bottom.
You will see that most of the better monitor review sites will have a collage of photos showing the monitor from various angles in each review.
You can also search on YouTube for "IPS vs TN" videos to see examples of color fidelity at angles off centre.
Typically, current IPS and PVA panels have viewing angles specified as 178° horizontal and 178° vertical.
Typically, current TN panels have viewing angles specified as either 170° or 160° horizontal and 160° vertical. A sure tell tale of a TN panel if you're checking them in a store is to look at the panel from below. As your angle off centre increases you should see the screen darken and the image flip so that it almost looks like a film negative.
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Bit Depth
IPS & PVA panels are 8bit or pseudo 10bit, while TN panels are for the most part pseudo 8bit - they are a 6bit panel which uses electronic techniques (Frame Rate Control & dithering) to emulate an 8bit (aka 24bit RGB) color depth.
6bit >> 6bit Red + 6bit Green + 6bit Blue >> 18bit RGB >> 262,000 colors
TN pseudo 8bit >> 16.2 million colors, many mfg's now list as 16.7 million
8bit = 8bit Red + 8bit Green + 8bit Blue >> 24bit RGB >> 16.7 million colors
10bit >> 10bit Red + 10bit Green + 10bit Blue >> 30bit RGB >> over 1 billion colors
You want a higher bit depth as, generally speaking, the higher bit depth and better quality brand of monitor will hopefully have higher quality electronics that process the image, thereby decreasing the potential to have issues with banding and/or posterization in the image on screen.
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Contrast Ratios
Don't pay much attention to manufacturer's claims for contrast ratios. You'll see a number of monitors promoting ratios like 50,000:1. Frankly it is marketing bullpoop - meaningless for image editing but possibly desirable for watching movies.
These high ratios are for Dynamic CR and for image editing you'll be using the monitor in a Static mode. After reading a few dozen reviews of better quality image editing monitors you'll see that typically, the measured contrast ratio (static) after calibration falls within a range of 600:1 to 900:1.
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Gamut
sRGB
Most LCD monitors offer at least a standard color gamut covering close to 100% of the "sRGB" color space. This equates to about 72% of the NTSC standard which is a specification you'll sometimes see listed. This is usually adequate for people editing images for posting to web sites like Flickr, Smugmug, Zenfolio, and others and/or where they upload images to off site printers like Costco and others.
"Wide Gamut" sRGB + AdobeRGB
A number of LCD monitors on the market offer a "wide gamut" covering about 100% of the sRGB color space and about 100% of the AdobeRGB color space. This is roughly equivalent to about 104% of the NTSC standard. For people who edit images in the AdobeRGB o ProPhotoRGB color space, it is essential to use a wide gamut monitor to see all the true nuances of color on screen.
However.... wide gamut monitors require a complete understanding of color management. ICC profiles must be identified and assigned for use in viewing and printing images using color managed software. Viewing images on a wide gamut monitor using software that is _not_ color managed often shows a image with certain colors noticeably over saturated - typically reds and greens are what stand out initially.
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Back Lights
CCFL vs. LED
Most current LCD monitors use a "CCFL" back light. It is a type of fluorescent tube.
Wide Gamut monitors will use a "W-CCFL" back light to cover both the sRGB and AdobeRGB color spaces.
A few, but increasingly more, monitors use an LED back light. Although it would seem to be newer and more "high tech", just because a monitor uses an LED backlight does not make it better for image work. In most cases it would seem the lower power consumption of the LED back light is being used as a feature to endorse the "green" marketing of the monitor. In these cases the LED back light is usually used behind a "TN" panel.
"White" LED back lights cover more or less of the sRGB color space while "RGB-LED" back lights are used in wide gamut monitors.
At this writing it is notable that only a handful of external monitors use a RGB-LED back light and these are top end premium units from HP, Lacie, and possibly Eizo costing $2000 USD and up. A handful of laptops use a RGB-LED back light such as the Dell Studio XPS 16.
The Apple Cinema series monitors use a white type LED back light and offer a standard sRGB color gamut.
The point is... CCFL's are still the back light of choice in high quality LCD monitors where color accuracy is paramount. Do NOT buy a LCD monitor for image editing simply because it has an LED back light.
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Video Connectivity
Analog VGA, Composite, HDMI, DVI-I, DVI-D, DisplayPort are all to be found.
Typically, if you see an HDMI port on a 21" to 27" monitor it is a clue that this is a monitor targeting the High Def video watching Blu-Ray PlayStation3 audience and there is a strong likelihood that it uses a TN panel. Be aware that your HDMI port may be capable of only displaying up to a max resolution of 1920x1080. Check the standards!
People using a Mac or iMac typically require a monitor with a DisplayPort and possibly may have to use a mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable.
If your monitor is large, 30" 2560x1600 resolution or 27" 2560x1440" resolution, you'll require a video card that has either a high bandwidth DisplayPort or dual-link DVI (DVI-D) port (DVI-D is actually only a single connector, not two; usually the head shell is white on color).
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Sites to check Panel Types
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/panelsearch.htm
http://www.flatpanelshd.com/panels.php
http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/s-ips-lcd-list.php
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Good Review Sites
http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/reviews.html
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/
http://www.flatpanelshd.com/reviews.php
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Other Stuff
This next link gets a lot of recommendations to read. You can take a peek at it but when I last looked about a month ago much of it was outdated.
Anand LCD Thread
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=39226
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Calibrators
Having been through the experience of trying to calibrate by eye using various tips and web sites such as:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/
and then acquiring a calibrator and quickly ending all my frustrations - both with results and time wasted, imho a hardware calibrator is a must for anyone doing a lot of editing.
LCD monitors require a calibration check every couple of months due to back light dimming and RGB drift, and with more people moving to dual monitors on their desktop, a calibrator is a good investment.
In addition to balancing the RGB settings of a monitor to set your color temperature (typically 6500K) and Gamma (usually 2.2), one of the key functions of a better quality calibrator is too measure the _white luminance_ of the monitor so you can adjust the brightness/contrast of the monitor to a level that _/*edited*/_ images produce prints that are not too dark. You can do this by eye but it is time consuming and costly in terms of ink and paper and subject to your perceptual whims at the time of editing the image. Ultimately you will have to print at least one test image to check your settings.
Here's a rough example of white luminance values for a variety of lighting:
80 cd/m2 ....... Pitch dark room or close to it
120 cd/m2 ..... Moderately lit, couple of 60w bulbs in the corner of the room
160 cd/m2 ..... Workers Compensation standard office lighting.
Your eye, in looking at the backlit image on the monitor also takes in the surrounding ambient lighting and if the monitor is too bright in balance against the room will perceive it needs to bring down the brightness of the image on the screen. You make the adjustment in one of several ways and end up with an image that prints too dark.
The point of using a calibrator is that you can work to the correct luminance level much quicker, especially with a calibrator that also measures the ambient light of the room and then suggests a white luminance value to start at.
With more people moving to using dual monitors, the feature to measure the brightness of a monitor is invaluable in being able to match both monitors.
Both the:
- Datacolor Spyder3 Elite
- Xrite i1 Display2
are calibrators that offer sampling of the ambient light levels in a room and offer a dedicated module in their software to target and calibrate to a specific white luminance value.
NOTE: If you get a print that is too dark from an unedited image that is straight out of the camera and its' histogram shows it is well exposed, it is usually an indication of an issue with a printer driver or the wrong paper/ink ICC profile was used or there is double profiling.
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James Croft Photography
http://www.JamesCroftPhotography.com
Photography makes life worth living, or at least makes it more attractive.