realiable photo editing monitor to go with power mac G5
July 3, 2006 11:08 AM   Subscribe

what kind of monitor should i buy to do high quality photo editing on? i am a photography student who will be purchasing a power mac G5 soon. im concerned with what monitor will be the most reliable for editing. from what i gather, i should avoid all lcd flat monitors and get a crt. is this true? i would prefer to keep the monitor price under $600. any advice is appreciated.
posted by slowtree to Media & Arts (14 answers total)
 
What are you going to do with these photos? On the CRTs: Everyone I know swears by them, and if you really care you'll need an Eye-One calibrator too. But, on the other hand, the NY Times among others uses LCDs in pre-press now, and my Dell FP2005 has great colour reproduction, after calibrating.
posted by bonaldi at 11:13 AM on July 3, 2006


Many would say that for under $600 you will have a hard time getting an LCD good enough for professional-level work, but CRT's are getting harder and harder to find. On the other hand, there are those who say that a properly calibrated workflow is more important than a specific monitor; do you plan to get a Spyder or similar calibration tool? Calibration is especially important if you are going to be doing your own printing.

There are any number of photography forums on the net where you can see what others are using.
posted by TedW at 11:22 AM on July 3, 2006


If you need to do reliable and accurate colour matching, you want to use a CRT. Unless, of course, you're willing to drop $1600 on the new Eizo ColorEdge or what have you.

The big problem is that good CRTs are becoming extinct. There was a much greater selection of CRTs with reliable colour four years ago than there is now.

Your best bet, to be honest, is to pick up the most expensive LaCie or NEC CRT you can find, and then buy an EyeOne to calibrate it.
posted by Jairus at 11:24 AM on July 3, 2006


TedW is absolutely right. This question gets asked dozens of times per week on every major photography forum on the net. If you do a search on any of them, you'll get more detailed answers than you will here.
posted by LuckySeven~ at 12:25 PM on July 3, 2006


You don't say what format your final product will take, but I think it's worth mentioning that if your work will be viewed on other people's monitors then you might question how perfect it needs to be if it'll be viewed on average quality uncalibrated crap.

In other words, consider your question re-worded as "What high-end microphone should I buy to record a program that's going to be played back on 1982 radio shack cassette walkmen units?"
posted by phearlez at 1:46 PM on July 3, 2006


my Dell FP2005 has great colour reproduction, after calibrating.

dell 200xFPWs are _very_ nice, and the 2007FPW can be gotten new for around $400 if you find a sale with free shipping. There's in fact one on now at Dell's site, but you may not want to buy now. The 2007FPW shipped with severe banding problems on gradients caused by an undisablable faroudja color processing chip, that you would probably notice while photo editing. They have a fixed revision, and you'd think this means they aren't shipping the older revisions, but in fact they are, until at least july 5th (see the dell monitor boards for more information). I got one last week and got the older revision. You can exchange on older revision to get a newer one, but for me it hasn't been worth the hassle since I don't do any design.

x86 macs are MUCH faster, and it is only a matter of time before an x86 tower comes out.

Indeed, the rumor is that it will be announced at WWDC in early august.
posted by advil at 2:04 PM on July 3, 2006


If you can add $150 to your budget, I'd recommend an NEC 1990SXi.
posted by Dean King at 2:22 PM on July 3, 2006


LCDs were a big no-no in prepress prior to integrated color management (like Adobe Gamma for Windows and ColorSync for the Mac); the case for CRTs is not nearly as strong now. By using Adobe Gamma I can easily produce photos using my LCD that look great color-wise when displayed on most devices.
posted by clevershark at 3:33 PM on July 3, 2006


I researched this earlier this year; I wish I had saved all the links to the good info (needle in a haystack) since this has come up on AskMe several times. So, from memory:

I found several sources (on professional publishing & photo websites) that said the backlighting on the Dells is too bright, even at its lowest setting, to properly calibrate the monitor with a hardware calibrator for soft proofing. I expect this would be a problem with other brands as well, since there seems to be a trend in manufacturing (overly) bright monitors. Marketers don't want their monitors to be the dimmest on the display floor.

I just did a Google search for "soft proof" dell "too bright". This problem has been discussed at Photo.net.

I also found that there are build quality issues on inexpensive monitors, as manufacturers cut a lot of corners on the low end. Some use high-quality LCDs found in more expensive displays, but the quality of the rest of the display (backlighting, the electronics that drive the panel, and casing) is lower.

The only manufacturers of flat panels under US$1,000 that appear to have given some thought to the needs of the publishing industry are LaCie and Apple. The low-end LaCie 119 sells for under $500. The twenty inch Apple Cinema is very nice and solidly built but at $800 is a bit spendy. (The Dell 2005fpw uses the same panel but uses a different backlight, etc.)
posted by D.C. at 5:13 PM on July 3, 2006 [1 favorite]


My mom and I recently were both looking for monitors (for photo editing) and we ended up settling on the NEC FE992. We were shooting for a $200 price tag, though, so if you have more money to spend there are certainly better things to be had. I'm very happy with it, however, and we'll buying a calibrator for it soon to see how well it matches up with my mom's (epson R2400) printer.

As people here have said, LaCie is the top of the top. I just don't have the money's to spend on it.
posted by ztdavis at 7:01 PM on July 3, 2006


Don't buy the G5 either - x86 macs are MUCH faster, and it is only a matter of time before an x86 tower comes out.

I got a slew of similar responses when I asked a computer question back in March. If you have done the research and feel it meets your needs, go ahead and get what you want. I am thrilled with my G5.
posted by TedW at 7:06 PM on July 3, 2006


Also, photoshop (which he will live in) will run dog slow in Rosetta on the Core Duo, especially compared with the Dual (or Quad) G5. It would run about as fast as it did on a 1 Ghz G4 from 5 years ago.
posted by blasdelf at 11:50 PM on July 3, 2006


re: D.C., I'm pretty sure the display in the 20" Apple iMac is the same as the display in the 20" cinema display. So that would be an option instead of getting a G5 and a monitor.
posted by chunking express at 7:45 AM on July 4, 2006


To back up ztdavis, Mike Johnson, of some internet photography infamy, recommended the NEC FE992 in his Dec 13 2005 blog post, archived here. Sorry, I cant figure out a way to link to the specific posting. Do a text string search or scroll to the date. I haven't used one of the monitors myself, but you could get one and a calibration device for your budget.
posted by mhespenheide at 9:59 PM on July 5, 2006


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