Monitor advice, please

[LVP]

Good luck with it. Will definitely be easier on the eyes with the brightness turned down a bit.

 

[JensM]

Indeed, my eyes still hurt. Still, it is somewhat "WOW"...

 

[JensM]

On another note, I am currently selling off some stuff to pour the proccedings into the photography bits, so after the rather bright monitor revelation of last week, I ordered a Datacolor SpyderX Pro in the weekend and got it today. Havent been bothered running it on the large monitor, but I did tune up the Laptop one, and it is just WOW, very easy on the eyes, and rather odd, not the biggest difference in the pictures so far, but I think I have been a bit heavy on the greens. Nothing much, in the tune of colourspace though, 96% Srgb and a whooping 73% Adobe.

Running calibration was literarily an eye opener.

Looking forward to see how it fares on the big one, but that is for tomorrow, I think, it is primarily going to lift another 3% or so off the Srgb.

 

[AaronE]

Does anyone know if you can use a 27 inch iMac as a monitor for a MacMini? The screen on my iMac works perfectly but the computer part of it needs an upgrade.

 

[JensM]

Well, that was a rather quick visit. Son#2 got the Asus due to needs, and I have a Benq 27" SW2700PT inbound, thanks to the major offload of stuff.

 

[LVP]

Looking forward to your thoughts vs. the ASUS

 

[Vermont3133]

Rather than start a new thread I thought I'd pick up on this one.
My wife who spends a lot of productive time in Lightroom, and I, are thinking of getting her a new monitor [at the moment she is using an old, average 23" Samsung]
She is best described as an advanced enthusiastic amateur when it comes to photography.
She also believes in buying the best she can afford and so when it comes to monitors something like the 27" Eizo ColorEdge CS2731 monitor is within her range.
But it ain't cheap....on special at the moment in Aus for $1750AUD.
So the question is.....are we crazy?
Given that she is not doing professional work, is it justified spending that much dough to get a 'good' photo editing monitor?
Just how much better will it be compared to your average $300-400 AUD monitor?

 

[Carbonman]

Rather than start a new thread I thought I'd pick up on this one.
My wife who spends a lot of productive time in Lightroom, and I, are thinking of getting her a new monitor [at the moment she is using an old, average 23" Samsung]
She is best described as an advanced enthusiastic amateur when it comes to photography.
She also believes in buying the best she can afford and so when it comes to monitors something like the 27" Eizo ColorEdge CS2731 monitor is within her range.
But it ain't cheap....on special at the moment in Aus for $1750AUD.
So the question is.....are we crazy?
Given that she is not doing professional work, is it justified spending that much dough to get a 'good' photo editing monitor?
Just how much better will it be compared to your average $300-400 AUD monitor?

It will be a lot better than a small cheap monitor - probably almost full gamut, large dynamic range and tunable for exact colour accuracy. It will make her hobby more enjoyable, that's a pretty good ROI.
The only thing preventing me from getting a better monitor than my nice but older Samsung S32D850 is the fact that quality video cards for higher resolution screens are insanely expensive because of the damned cryptocurrency miners buying most of the really good ones up.

 

[Vermont3133]

Graham, thanks!
The video card is something I'd better look at before tweaking the plastic!

 

[John King]

Rather than start a new thread I thought I'd pick up on this one.
My wife who spends a lot of productive time in Lightroom, and I, are thinking of getting her a new monitor [at the moment she is using an old, average 23" Samsung]
She is best described as an advanced enthusiastic amateur when it comes to photography.
She also believes in buying the best she can afford and so when it comes to monitors something like the 27" Eizo ColorEdge CS2731 monitor is within her range.
But it ain't cheap....on special at the moment in Aus for $1750AUD.
So the question is.....are we crazy?
Given that she is not doing professional work, is it justified spending that much dough to get a 'good' photo editing monitor?
Just how much better will it be compared to your average $300-400 AUD monitor?

My advice here, Dell UP2516D:

https://www.mu-43.com/threads/monitor-advice-please.110657/post-1455689

FAR cheaper than the Eizo, and as good, or better.

 

[Vermont3133]

Thanks John, I'll have a look at that!

 

[pake]

Rather than start a new thread I thought I'd pick up on this one.
My wife who spends a lot of productive time in Lightroom, and I, are thinking of getting her a new monitor [at the moment she is using an old, average 23" Samsung]
She is best described as an advanced enthusiastic amateur when it comes to photography.
She also believes in buying the best she can afford and so when it comes to monitors something like the 27" Eizo ColorEdge CS2731 monitor is within her range.
But it ain't cheap....on special at the moment in Aus for $1750AUD.
So the question is.....are we crazy?
Given that she is not doing professional work, is it justified spending that much dough to get a 'good' photo editing monitor?
Just how much better will it be compared to your average $300-400 AUD monitor?

I bought my first good monitor 7-8 years ago I think. It was one from the ASUS PRO series. It was like jumping to a whole new world as I previously only had TN-panels. Now that I upgraded my ASUS to BenQ SW2700PT 2 years ago I was blown away - again!

So yes, you can definitely see the difference between "okayish", "good" and "very good" monitors. Is it worth it? It depends on how much you appreciate the image quality.

Although it's not all positive though. Right after I got the BenQ I started noticing flaws on my edits. The black levels were horrible and sometimes my colors were off too. I was devastated at first but once I learned to use my editing tools better I feel there's no going back.

 

[masatran]

BenQ EW32-70U Monitor. flicker-free, UHD resolution, 10-bit color. 95% of P3 color gamut. has USBC port, headphone jack. $350.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078HWBGH5/

 

[John King]

The Dell display I use, a UP2516D, is 100% aRGB (wider gamut than P3), has a 14 bit colour look up table and 12 bit IPS panel.

ProPhotoRGB (PPRGB) is a far wider gamut than aRGB and P3.

A (very) basic article here:

https://www.androidauthority.com/color-gamuts-guide-3035782/

More in depth at Cambridge in Colour:

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-spaces.htm

I use PPRGB and 16 bit for RAW editing.

P3 is basically an sRGB colour space that has been 'fixed' to display properly. It is not really a wide gamut colour space.

 

[ac12]

I would like to make another suggestion.
TWO monitors.
One for photo work and one for other work.

The issue is the screen brightness.
When I calibrated my monitor, it was toooo bright to look at for mostly WHITE applications, like Word, Excel, and many web sites.
Because I do a LOT of Excel and Word work, my eyes felt like it was looking at a bare light bulb.
So I turned the brightness of my monitor down, to a level that my eyes could handle. Which was NOT a calibrated level.
Note: My Dell monitor does not have a bright/dim switch like my old Sony CRT monitor did. So switching brightness levels is a real hassle. I am never sure that I returned it to the calibrated level.

When I redo my monitor setup, if the new monitors do not have a dim/bright switch, I plan to have have two monitors.
One monitor at photo calibrated brightness level, and the other at a dimmer "tolerable" brightness level for Excel/Word.

 

[Mack]

The BenQ was recommended at the Freestyle Photo print school I went to. Friend bought one there and is quite happy with it.

I also went to an Eizo demonstration workshop and sprung for their CG 4K series top-end thing that has the calibration hardware built into it. Nice part with it is it can do its own self stand-alone calibration and has its internal setup for sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProRGB, and several movie profiles. Some arm mechanically swings down onto the screen and it does its thing after a 30 minute warmup, and then disappears for another month. If the color is off their factory-set standard, it wasn't due to me using an external calibrator or some video feed from my computer and messing it up as that can be off. Eizo also calibrates their panel so all nine quadrants are the same too.

If I do want to mess it up, I can set it into an "Emulation mode" where I can make it match a laptop, tablet, phone, paper/ink, etc. with an x-rite external spectrometer. But I can always go back to their factory calibration standard and that gets me and my computer out of the Standards loop.

When I bought mine, some guy there from some movie editing studio bought four of their large ones. He said they were throwing out their Apple displays as they were too contrasty and were not revealing shadow detail as well as the Eizo's. Helped make my decision easier ... but it ain't cheap at ~ $3K.

 

[BosseBe]

The issue is the screen brightness.

I use the Datacolor Spyder Express to calibrate my monitor(s) and it comes with a Profile chooser, with that it is easy to switch between profiles.
What I don't know is how to create another profile then the one from calibration, but it should be possible. (I can see a generic profile that looks like the default one before the calibrated profile is loaded.)

 

[Carbonman]

I posted this on the other site as well - hoping for good advice that helps me forget my computer bits and pieces for a few years.
I'm planning on replacing my aging Samsung S32D850 monitor because it suddenly blacks out for a couple of seconds totally unpredictably. I suspect the power supply has some issues but can't get it serviced (if it's even possible) without buying a replacement. I use the monitor for both personal and work so uptime is important.
I'm looking at either an Asus ProArt PA329CV or BenQ PD3205U. Both are 4K 32" monitors. Any advice or opinions to help my decision?

 

[ac12]

I posted this on the other site as well - hoping for good advice that helps me forget my computer bits and pieces for a few years.
I'm planning on replacing my aging Samsung S32D850 monitor because it suddenly blacks out for a couple of seconds totally unpredictably. I suspect the power supply has some issues but can't get it serviced (if it's even possible) without buying a replacement. I use the monitor for both personal and work so uptime is important.
I'm looking at either an Asus ProArt PA329CV or BenQ PD3205U. Both are 4K 32" monitors. Any advice or opinions to help my decision?

I am using a Dell 4K 32inch curved screen.
At my viewing distance of arms length, I like the curved screen. I just wish it was curved more.

At arms length, 29" seems to be the max size, for me.

 

[BosseBe]

If you have the space for them, maybe 2 monitors in a smaller size can be something to think about?
Then you would not be out of a screen if one of them broke.

I have 2 x 27" monitors for my home office and at work, so I get the same setup.