Apple cinema displays are hard to beat for large screens...I've heard good things about Sharp Acquos (sp?). They mainly use it for displaying slideshows, etc...
mkweaver wrote:
Is it possible to use a flat-screen TV as a monitor to show people their photos? Can it be color calibrated like a monitor?
Or would I be better off to purchase a large monitor, or a projector system?
Any help or experiences would be appreciated.
It largely depends on what you want to show and under what conditions.
I use a projector because I want to show large and I frequently show at my clients' homes (projecting into the space the portrait will inhabit). Projectors that will project a 30x40 image are far cheaper, more compact, and lighter than a monitor that would show a 30x40 image.
Sorry, thats just not true. yes they have decent resolution, but the dot pitch is so bit that detail is miserable. Plasmas and LCD TVs are good for viewing images, nothing more. Not to mention color accuracy is marginal. Using a flat panel for editing would be a nightmare.
mdude85 wrote:
Optimal images on projectors require the absence of almost all light. If you cannot deliver that, then the images will look washed out.
They actually look very similar to what the final print looks like. if you get 300:1 contrast on the projection then you are right in range with paper.
HerbChong wrote:
300:1 is over 8 stops. that is way beyond the best paper, which is a little over 5 stops (i.e. 32:1) under optimal conditions.
Herb...
I think I had the standard 300ppi figure on my brain....but I have seen photo paper (BW anyway) measured at 100:1. However point remains...prints are washed out and a projector can actually out do a print even in a lit room.
CTYankee wrote:
Sorry, thats just not true. yes they have decent resolution, but the dot pitch is so bit that detail is miserable. Plasmas and LCD TVs are good for viewing images, nothing more. Not to mention color accuracy is marginal. Using a flat panel for editing would be a nightmare.
I wouldn't advocate using a TV to edit images, but to suggest that the reason not to use them is that they have low resolution, is actually incorrect. 1920px is enough resolution. That's all my post speaks to.
i'd like to see one of those prints. my Harman Gloss on my 3800 tops out at about 6 stops.
Herb....
CTYankee wrote:
I think I had the standard 300ppi figure on my brain....but I have seen photo paper (BW anyway) measured at 100:1. However point remains...prints are washed out and a projector can actually out do a print even in a lit room.
I think I had the standard 300ppi figure on my brain....but I have seen photo paper (BW anyway) measured at 100:1. However point remains...prints are washed out and a projector can actually out do a print even in a lit room.
Moreover, those considerations matter more to photographers than to clients. Clients are impressed, first of all, by the size of the image. Relatively few people can envision the impressiveness of size without actually seeing it (at least envision it well enough to easily pay more for it).
Show them on their own wall an 8x10 and then show them a 30x40, and you'll at least get a 20x30 sale. Contrast is far less of a factor.
I really agree with RDKirk, the gallery that sells much of my work does so to office makeovers in the legal and medical industries, and the gallery brings a projector and CD of images to the customer and projects on the office wall (or a portable screen If the wall color is too dark) and they project at different sizes and I custom print to order. Much of this is done before the office is completed and the walls are still only primer painted or in the white. The prints arrive about the time the offices receive their final accessorizing. Bigger is really better in terms of making the sale.
well, I hook up my MacBook to the 50" plasma in the living room quite often to watch films and for using Frontrow to listen to music and watch podcasts and whatnot, the quality is quite amazing actually. I work on a 30" cinema display and if you are talking about previewing your images to non professional clients then go for a large or extra large HD plasma screen, why plasma. Well I looked at a bunch of options and the plasma simply blew LCD out of the water when it came to the "feel" of the image. For any real work on the images it's useless but if you want to sell your wedding stuff or do in office presentations then go for it. This is one example where more is more. If you have money to burn they have 103 inch models for around 120.000 us and the price of the 150 inch was somewhat more, well, hmm, closer to the Bugatti Veyron but then again.
A decent plasma in the 42 - 50 inch range is about the same price as a decent projector that can show your stuff in 150 inches but then you really are throwing image quality out of the window, you have to darken the room, no real whites, no real blacks, don't bother.
A non professional client is not going to care if the exact gamut of the screen or the native resolution is optimal, they are not going to know if you run Adobe 1998 or Pro Photo, but they will buy more images and bigger prints if they see their images in a large format from the get go, it's easy to make impressive slideshow presentations in Lightroom and other programs and it works, I seem to recall a system for sale in the late to mid nineties where you bought a really expensive kit with a back projection system for wedding/portrait photographers which increased many photographers sales, now you can do it off your laptop and a 1500 dollar flat screen tv.
