[littlerobotman]

I've been getting into digital photography and want to now heave the hulking great CRT off of my desk and replace it with an LCD screen - to free up space mainly.

I have been looking at different brands: Lacie, Eizo, Apple and Dell. Having bought a hardware colour calibrator and chatted to informed retailers, colour fidelity seems to be the top priority. However, when I study specs on individual monitors the confusion sets in...

Some of the contrast ratios quoted seem very low? I think I must have misunderstood something. A couple of years back when buying a projector I understood the 'contrast ratio' to mean 'amount of discrete tones a device was capable of rendering between black to white' - this made sense. However, when I look at Apple's monitors, which are supposed to have impeccable colour ("you can rely on it to colour proof onscreen"), they quote a 400:1 contrast ratio ...is that extremely low?

My logic being that to go from black to white (and determine contrast ratio) you'd have the RGB pixels go from 'full off' through to 'full on' and stepping up in unison - so this would determine the amount of 'levels' to which any individual colour pixel could be set (?). Now while I appreciate that the combination of RGBs at 400 different levels will yield a health amount of colours - is the 1000:1 contrast ratio I looked for on my projector overkill, or rather how much is enough to our eyes?

I could of course have all of this wonky in my head and hope that a more technically minded member can set me straight. At the moment choices range between the £500 - £850 and I want to make sure to spend enough for it to be the right monitor in the long run.

Illumination appreciated

Can't comment on the pro's and con's of the tech side but I've installed a few flat panels computer monitors "to free up space". However the users have found out they need to have the screen at the correct "focal length" so it's dragged forward to were the old CRT sat. Not a lot you can do with the space behind the new screen. Just food for thought.

I just went thru this dilemma.
I have never really liked LCD for photography work because of the lack of color accuracy so I have held off buying one for quite some time at home, I am using a 20" Sony and a 22" Mitsubishi which are all calibrated. At work we are using 23" & 30" Apple Cinema screens which looked pretty good for photo work I work in pre press in a commercial print shop.
Well I bought an LCD for my PC recently I went with a Viewsonic 2025wm 16:10 Aspect Ratio: which has a Contrast Ratio: 800:1 and Brightness: 300 cd/m2 using a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 you also need to check on your current video card to see if it will drive the LCD flat panels resolution you pick and get one that supports DVI and use it. My video card is a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro PC & Power Mac Edition duel DVI so I still have one of my large CRT's with it.
At first I can't say it was worth it since getting it calibrated wasn't doing what I wanted but recently I have finally got it dialed in and my LCD and CRT look almost the same but the LCD colors are defiantly brighter with more contrast to the eyes but over all color tone is now correct. I still really on my CRT for the photos that need great accuracy I still am not 100% trusting yet of the LCD but it is still good.
I can see were gamers and movie goers would like the color it produces and text looks great.
One of my main reasons for trying one now is power and heat and space those CRT''s are known for having a 20 &21 on your desk sure takes a lot of space. One is gone the other will stay for some time and if I ever do get another it will need to be at least 3" larger a 20" Wide Screen isn't nearly as large as my 20" CRT so if you want a large screen area a Wide Screen may not be what you're looking for.
But I picked the Viewsonic 2025wm for its DVI input, 800:1 Contrast Ratio, 8 ms Response Time and something I really liked was it's adjustable (sRGB, 9300K, 6800K, 6500K) which came in handy when I really started to calibrate it.
So all in all it's not a bad LCD for the money.

[Mr.D]

If you want a screen you can actually calibrate for accurate image work I'd suggest a sony fw900 off of ebay ( as long as it hasn't been trashed). As far as I'm concerned there isn't an LCD panel on the market that is good enough for a professional image pipeline.

I have a dell 2405 at home and even with it profiled and calibrated its less trustworthy than my old uncalibrated iiyama 21" crt when it comes to representing the actual data of the image on screen.

If you feel that you can get away with a level of innaccuracy then I'd recommend you get a calibration system ( like spyder2Pro) that will at least give you a consistent image enviroment albeit an innacurate one...any disparity that you see with the finished article compared with how it resolves on your monitor can be unconciously learned after a while and you become aware of the tolerances you can work within before requiring to strike an actual proof.

[Paul Shirley]

Originally Posted by littlerobotman

Some of the contrast ratios quoted seem very low? I think I must have misunderstood something. A couple of years back when buying a projector I understood the 'contrast ratio' to mean 'amount of discrete tones a device was capable of rendering between black to white' - this made sense.

On monitors contrast ratio is the ratio of emitted light between the darkest and brightest colours (black&white) and *only* B&W, not the colour depth (number of levels). In theory a perfect monitor would have infinite contrast, black would emit zero light. Obviously higher is better and it will mostly affect dark areas.

Another thing to be careful with is colour depth, check you're getting full 8/24 bit colour usually listed as 16.7million in the spec sheet. Many monitors provide 16.2m colours and because of the way they work that makes more difference than you might think.

Take response times with a huge pinch of salt, everyone measures them differently. My 16ms Iiyama is actually as fast as some 8ms panels!

[littlerobotman]

Thanks for the replies.

Mr.D (et al), I had a look at the fw900 on the web - I'll go and see one in the flesh. I'm interested in your thinking for the comment you made:

"As far as I'm concerned there isn't an LCD panel on the market that is good enough for a professional image pipeline."

One of the LCD panels I was keen on is the Apple 23/30" cinema display. I understand that Apple teamed up with Samsung to deliver these. Talking to a retailer I was told two things when I asked why (if) these were good screens? Firstly he said that unlike other LCD monitors they didn't have the circuitry for all the usual adjustment buttons etc. and this, as with highend audio, meant that there was less inteference with the picture signal. Not sure how much I believe this, though I accept that the logic. Secondly he told me that Apple would be releasing new screens at the end of August - this being the case it would make little sense to buy one right now...

So this led me to wonder how old was the technology in the Apple screens. I found a link on Apple's page about the Cinema display (Perfect Color Starts Here - annoyingly a 'free online seminar'). This is basically a video from 2004 of an Apple bod extolling the virtues of the Cinema Display (CD). When it comes to colour, he claims that the CD has a broader Gamut output/footprint than any other monitor technology on the market. This is a both barrels smokingly bold claim in any man's town. Now I accept that sales spiel is to be taken cautiously (I think Loreal's TV scientists - iin a clean way), AND that this is 2004 - but what should be made of that?

I have always believed that CRT's had the edge perhaps mostly informed by a friend who colour grades films but was starting to think - there must be objective independent tests that allow a manufacturer to make such a bold claim? Also, listening to the AVForum's podcast last week there was a discussion of which is best LCD/Plasma. This is obviously subjective as well as a discussion of the technology but LCD's inherent backlit brightness and its impact on the darker tones struck me. The fact too that (in general) Plasma screens had better rendering of realistic skin tones struck me as a concern.

The whole area of colour reproduction and perception is tricky business - one that can be taken to extremes. What I want for the moment is to be able to process an image (tone curves, colour cast and tweaks) and know that I'm working to a visualisation of that data that is the 'best' that my monitor can give me (so I'm not adding contrast/colour in my processing that's working against my screen and not the true qualities of the image). I have my own printer but really want to be able to hand off my files to someone like Metrophoto and not have a big suprise in the prints - and for any subtleties I intended to remain subtle.

I have the Spyder2 Pro and this has helped me work between Mac and PC without the big differences I saw before. When I buy a better screen which hardware calibrator should I consider and around how much would it cost? - how bad is the Spyder2 at the tasks in comparison?

Paul, thanks for the confirmation of contrast ratio. The levels value you point out has also been noted. I think that my real question is trying to find out independently of the device outputting the image to the screen (and what color depth that might be able to deliver) - Doesn't the native amount of tones that a screen can produce dictate the amount of colour levels it can display? For example if you had a dimmer switch that had only 10 physical positions it could be in, wouldn't it be pointless attaching something to it tried to set it to 5.5 or 2.1 - it couldn't physically reproduce these settings anyhow. Sorry for my Heath Robinson view but I don't think I really do get how this all works.

In an ideal world what I see on screen would exactly match the print, I'd be loaded and command an army of robots. As it is, I have a bit of a headache and think that if you've read this far you might post something that can help me.

Thanks in advance.

LRM

[Paul Shirley]

Originally Posted by littlerobotman

I think that my real question is trying to find out independently of the device outputting the image to the screen (and what color depth that might be able to deliver) - Doesn't the native amount of tones that a screen can produce dictate the amount of colour levels it can display?

This page helps explain the difference between a true 16.7m display and the fairly common 16.2m version http://www.geocities.com/icecow88/97...hering-en.html

Basically 16.7m is (supposedly) a real 256 levels per channel display, 16.2m is 64 levels (actually 262k colours) and dithered to fake up more colours. Its very like the process used in printing and it reduces the effective resolution of your display. You'll notice TFT reviews often spend time on assessing these dither patterns, its that visible. I say supposedly because it really wouldn't surprise me if there's some cheating going on to achieve a 16.7m display but maybe that's just paranoia

[tomson]

I know plenty of people using Apple LCD screens for high-end work (commercial photographers, ad agencies doing everything from tv to billboards, post-prod houses, magazine and newspaper production etc etc) without any problems.