Reasonably Priced Monitors

[neil poulsen]

What's available now as reasonably priced CRT monitors that are suitable for color correction? It must have individual adjustments for each gun (R,G,B), brightness, and contrast. Adjustments for pincushion, barreling, rotation, etc., would also be nice.

Until the last few months, we had the LaCie 19" at $374 as quite a good option. But the OEM, Mitsubishi, has dropped this monitor, and it's no longer available. I don't think that similarly priced LCD's are good options, although perhaps I'm mistaken on this.

This is being used for LF photography. I tried asking on a more well-known digital forum, but only received a single response. So, I thought that I would check here.

Thanks.

[paulr]

i second the question ... been curious about the same thing.

[Scott Schroeder]

Well I got a great deal on a reconditioned Lacie Electron Blue IV 19" for $229 (that included shipping!) Bought it four months ago and it works great.

I see they don't have any now and I don't know how often they do, but keep an eye on their clearance center here:

http://www.lacie.com/products/clearance/

[Robert A. Zeichner]

I have no specific recommendation, but I do have a comment on CRT monitors in general. Due to the green initiative, many traditional manufacturers of CRT monitors are bailing out in preference for the LCD's. The glass used in picture tubes contains a lot of lead and cerium. All the waste that is generated in the manufacturing process has to go somewhere and the restrictions on disposing this are tremendous. Sony has discontinued all of their professional CRT monitors and only a handful of Broadcast grade monitors remain in the line. They have introduced the LUMA series of LCD monitors to replace the CRT's. Other manufacturers are slowly doing the same. The colorimetry of LCD's is different than their CRT predecessors. CRT's designed for critical color work have very specialized phosphors and circuitry designed to allow precision calibration. If critical color matching is your objective, you may have no choice but to spend big bucks on one of the few remaining CRT's designed for pre-press applications. In time, the LCD's will improve and already have with regard to noise in the blacks and image retention. Distortion and Linearity are not even an issue with LCD's. Whether they will ever rival the quality of a first rate CRT in the pre-press arena remains to be seen, but keep in mind that 25 years ago no one in the television industry thought chip cameras would ever rival the best tube cameras. Not only do they surpass them, their cost has steadily declined adjusted for inflation.

[Brian Ellis]

I just added a Dell 19" LCD after seeing it favorably compared with higher-end (and much higher cost) Samsungs and Sonys in anothe forum. I like it a lot though I'm not a super sophisticated color printer and someone who is might require something better for color matching. But after calibrating it with Spyder and using the QTR canned lab profile (not the new "create your own ICC profile" that Roy has added to the latest version) I get excellent b&w matches between monitor and print.

[bglick]

Robert, what pre press monitors are you referring to? Other than Barco, I don't know of any. The removal of CRT's in general bothers me, as many of us are ultra sensitive to looking into fluorsent lights, which is the back lighting of LCD's. I can't use them without constant health issues. Even CRT's I have to run at a min. 160hz re fresh rate. Even though CCFT flicker at 10 - 15k hertz, there is something problematic about them vs. CRT. I spent years investigating this..... CRT's are my only hope. Sony Artisan is a great monitor for color work, but as mentioned, recently discontinuted. I hope there will remain some options, even if they are "high end"

[mark blackman]

When I've been in any high-end printshop in London, the monitor of choice is without question the Apple Cinema line. The last place was producing some 4 ft wide images for London Fashion Week for some of the top names. Many of the orginal product images where shot on LF, drum scanned and printed on a Durst Lambda. I asked one of the printers: " why Apple?" He said it was partly familiarity, partly the anti-PC bias in 'design' and mainly because they could control the colour end to end. He also pointed out that they could fit two workstations into the space taken up by one using CRT technology.

[paulr]

are there any good guidelines for buying a used monitor? how long can you expect a good one to last before calibration becomes an issue?

[lauren]

Based on Paul's question, I thought this would be a good place to ask the following: I am just breaking into the world of post-production photography and, as such, I'm quite green!

I have an Acer 290 TravelMate notebook (running Windows XP; graphics card: Intel 82852/82855 GM/ GME Graphics Controller). I would like to purchase a quality monitor and connect it to the laptop in order to do color correction. First, does anyone foresee problems connecting a monitor to this kind of laptop?

Second, I was told Apple, LaCie and Ezio have the top rated monitors, but my budget is a bit tight. And after all the talk that CRTs are on the way out, how should I go about choosing between CRT and LCD? Size is also an issue as my studio apt is not too spacious. Based on my needs, can anyone recommend a particular monitor?

Lastly, any recommendations on a color calibration software that is reasonably priced?

Any advice is greatly appreciated? Thanks, Lauren

[Scott Schroeder]

Oh yea, you might also check out Dell. I believe they sell refurbed monitors also. A lot of their monitors were relabeled Sony Trinitons.