Best Photo Equipment Purchase of 2006
Here's my nomination for 'Best bit of photo gear I bought this past year: it's the 30" Apple Cinema HD monitor. Expensive, yes, but not much more expensive that buying, say, two 21" monitors and running a dual-headed setup, and you end up with a single display surface, without a mullion in the middle of your 'window'.
The display is sharp and contrasty. I have no trouble profiling it with my Gretag-Macbeth Eye-One Display 2 puck and software, and the resulting profile amounts to little tweaks, not a big huge adjustment. The profile is stable over time, so when I forget to make a new profile at the recommended intervals, it's still good.
Best of all, running photoshop and editing photos on this thing is a joy. I can look at an image at 100%, and actually have enough of the image showing that I can see the context of what I'm adjusting.
I love it. I recall reading an essay in Lenswork, where someone (Brooks Jensen, in one of his lengthy editorial essays, perhaps) pondered "Why would ANYONE want a monitor that large?"
Well, here's the answer: it makes the process of taking those scans and digital captures and turning them into prints a lot faster, a lot easier, and a whole heck of a lot more pleasant.
The display is sharp and contrasty. I have no trouble profiling it with my Gretag-Macbeth Eye-One Display 2 puck and software, and the resulting profile amounts to little tweaks, not a big huge adjustment. The profile is stable over time, so when I forget to make a new profile at the recommended intervals, it's still good.
Best of all, running photoshop and editing photos on this thing is a joy. I can look at an image at 100%, and actually have enough of the image showing that I can see the context of what I'm adjusting.
I love it. I recall reading an essay in Lenswork, where someone (Brooks Jensen, in one of his lengthy editorial essays, perhaps) pondered "Why would ANYONE want a monitor that large?"
Well, here's the answer: it makes the process of taking those scans and digital captures and turning them into prints a lot faster, a lot easier, and a whole heck of a lot more pleasant.
posted by Paul Butzi at 10:48 AM
1 Comments:
I use two normal aspect ratio LCDs at work and one widescreen panel at home. I had used dual displays at home for photoediting for a while too. I see pros and cons with both.
The break down the middle is frustrating with a dual display, particularly when things occasionally get lost under/around it.
But the thing I wish I could get in a widescreen is a virtual desktop that splits the screen in two. A sort of virtual mullion if you like. This would then let me maximise a window in the left or right half of the screen and have it jump to just that half - but with the option of having it span the whole thing too.
This way I could quickly work on things side by side, or stretch it across the screen. Right now I have to fiddle with resizing windows if I want that sort of split screen layout on a single widescreen. Anyway, time to stop rambling.
Also, I learned a new word today, too. Mullion. thanks!
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