Looking for a bit of monitor advice

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charlesk
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p.1 #1 · Looking for a bit of monitor advice

I'm an amateur landscape photographer making the transition to semi-pro, and about to really try to focus on advancing my business. I'm currently using a single Dell 2405FPW monitor, which I've had since 2005. It is in good working order, but it's got some obvious flaws -- such as "waves" of inconsistency in the brightness, and also appears to have some difficulties with smoothly transitioning from light to dark blue (it appears to jump to an odd purple at times.)

Despite these issues I've never had any real difficulties with it for most uses, including photo editing. I bought an Xrite colormunki calibrator which appears able to handle it okay.

So what's the problem? I'm just wondering if by not using a proper photo editing monitor, I may be setting myself up for future problems in terms of color consistency between what I see and what I print. In the past I have mostly just worked on the web, where I realize I can't really control what others see anyway. But I am hoping to start printing my photos much more and don't want to be dealing with issues where the prints look totally off.

I suppose the smart thing would be to try some prints and see if I have a problem, right? Maybe I just need some reassurance.

Since my photo-related income is rather low at the moment, I don't really want to buy a new monitor unless I need to. But I'm also about to reprocess a lot of photos and don't want to have re-reprocess.

Thanks for any thoughts,

Charles

Sep 03, 2012 at 09:07 PM

miccullen
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p.1 #2 · Looking for a bit of monitor advice

Lovely monitor, the 2405. I had one from 2005 through late 2011, and it was great. Took calibration very well, but eventually the backlight started to play up and I got brightness variations, etc.

IMHO, you simply can't do without a monitor you trust implicitly. I went to a pair of U2711 monitors, which are even better than the 2405 was, so I'm very happy with them, obviously.

But you spend a LOT of time looking at your monitor, it's the foundation of everything you do in post, and they generally last a few years (if you get a good one, as you've found), so get a good one, I say.

You've already got the calibrator, so make the most of it.

Sep 03, 2012 at 09:42 PM

Psychic1
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p.1 #3 · Looking for a bit of monitor advice

NEC Spectraview I find to be excellent and completely self-calibrating.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/822739-REG/NEC_P241W_BK_SV_24_Widescreen_Professional_Graphics.html

Sep 03, 2012 at 10:02 PM

charlesk
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p.1 #4 · Looking for a bit of monitor advice

miccullen: Thanks for the response. Just saying you thought it was a "lovely monitor" made me feel a bit better.

I didn't choose it specifically for photo editing, but have been using it for that as well.

Not sure if the "implicit trust" issue is enough to justify spending a bunch of money on a monitor when the current one is working just fine. I don't have any real problems with it except for a bit of waviness in the brightness, which isn't causing any problems with editing.

So maybe I should just go with it and see how it goes?

Psychic1: Does seem to be a nice monitor but I don't really have $1k to drop on a monitor right now... thanks for the recommendation though.

Sep 03, 2012 at 11:29 PM

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