CRT recommendations

[JW Dewdney]

Have you looked for one lately? Not only are they hard to find used, but you have to find one with some life left in it. If it won't calibrate to within 80% of target luminosity it is pretty much toast. When I was looking for one a couple of months ago I couldn't find one that I could test that was more than 60%. One I had shipped in here which "was barely used" was at 50%! That is a monitor that was completely used up.

I got my IV just a little while back - I had to keep my brightness at ZERO percent just to set my white/black points. I figure that's doing pretty good.

[Ted Harris]

Ted: thanks for the offer. I'm going to try my luck locally first, just because shipping these beheemoths is such a chore. As far as the Eizos go, I see great deals on the flex scan models, but not the high end ones (which are the only ones i've seen, and fallen in love with). Any idea how the two lines compare?

Paul: I've only seen the high-end Eizo's from afar. The FlexScan models are high end enough for me. They appear to have the same build quality as the the higher end ones, jus tnot as many bells and whistles. The frames are metal and they are sturdy. Before I decided to buy them for our workshops, where it is critical that they calibrate and stay calibrated ... even with shipping back and forth across the country .... I checked with X-Rite and got a flat out answr that ALL Eizo monitors calibrate rapidly, easily and stay calibrated. That was all I needed.

As for the LaCie gathering dust. If you decide you want to take a drive up here just shout and you get free shooting in beautiful NH as well as a monitor .

[paulr]

As for the LaCie gathering dust. If you decide you want to take a drive up here just shout and you get free shooting in beautiful NH as well as a monitor .

cool, i'm juggling my options right now. and waiting to hear what the t.v. repair shack has to say about my dead baby. my climbing partner and i may be heading up to the white mountains one of these weekends, so if i decide the eizo's too dear, and a perfect sony or lacie doesn't rain down from heaven, i may be driving up your way.

[Rakesh Malik]

At work I have a 20" Apple Cinema screen. I see more shadow detail on the LaCie, and when I take my files to the local Eizo distributor for a lust-session, but the Apple has dropped so far in price, and does enough of what I need, that I am strongly leaning towards getting one for home use when the re-calibration frequency of the LaCie gets too tiresome. Were I only doing colour I would probably have one already.

Check out the Dell monitors. They use the same models that Apple uses in their CinemaDisplays, just with a different bezel and a significantly lower price tag (because that's what Dell does).

[Ted Harris]

Paul, just give me a heads up and a few hours notice

[paulr]

Check out the Dell monitors. They use the same models that Apple uses in their CinemaDisplays, just with a different bezel and a significantly lower price tag (because that's what Dell does).

Like Struan, I use a cinema display at work. It's great for graphics and surfing the web, but I don't care for it for photography. It doesn't offer true calibration, and the colors and contrast are exagerated. And like most LCDs, it puts an outline around the individual pixels that I can see ... which gives a kind of artificial sharpening effect that makes me crazy. And the contrast changes a fair amount when I move my head around.

Does anyone have a sense of how the Eizo FlexScan measures up with regard to these annoyances? The coloredge that I saw had none of them.

[Kirk Gittings]

I had to keep my brightness at ZERO percent just to set my white/black points.

JW

That sounds strange. What form of monitor calibration are you using?

[neil poulsen]

I was lucky. I purchased a LaCie Electron Blue a couple of months before they stopped production.

I currently have two monitors side-by-side, and switch to an old NEC when I'm not doing color corrections. I want this thing to last.

As to LaCie's found on Craigslist, I have a friend who's purchased three of these in the Portland area. (LaCie's home base is located near Portland.) Two of the three are defective.

[JW Dewdney]

The last few generations of what used to be adobe's gamma control panel, now incorporated in the OSX monitor calibration routine seem to have been quite good. Indeed it works for almost anything I need to do... and I'd recently gotten some lightjet tests done of some tricky images in terms of highlight and shadow detail. I have to say I've been VERY pleased with the results. And, well - sorry if I seem ignorant (believe me though - I've been wrestling with color cal for YEARS and YEARS!!) - but that's really all that matters to me - getting the results I want. Yes, anyway - I know how nutty it must sound - but I figure that the 'brightness' control on the monitor is a variable 'range' controlling the gun voltage. Perhaps it's miscalibrated (the brightness control) but regardless - there seems to be no shortage of photons flying out of the back of the thing. I'm assuming that'll mean there will be PILES of latitude for a progressively dimming monitor.

JW

That sounds strange. What form of monitor calibration are you using?

[JW Dewdney]

As to LaCie's found on Craigslist, I have a friend who's purchased three of these in the Portland area. (LaCie's home base is located near Portland.) Two of the three are defective.

If anyone wants one (or two) - I know of three 22" mark III's that should have LOADS of life left on them - and I think they'd be QUITE cheap. In the Los Angeles area, I mean.