Monitor advice

[FroBroJapan]

Hi there,

I'm new to the forums but have been receiving the newsletter for some time now. My question here is about a monitor. I'm a complete novice, but am really interested in post production work especially. Being a novice I've never owned a monitor other than the pre-packaged one that comes with my desktop. This time I'm making the whole thing from scratch. Since I'm in Tokyo I won't have access to the Dell's that are commonly listed on the forumns here. Does anyone have general guidelines for purchasing a monitor for a novice? I'm hoping to spend $400 or less.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Peace

[autofocus]

This may not be the answer you are hoping for, but I do all my edits on a calibrated CRT monitor. Unless you can afford a high end flat screen designed for photo editing for ~$1000+ bucks I still feel CRT's are best for the job. Everyday consumer LCD flat screens by nature are high contrast, overly bright, and have very saturated colors. From what I understand they also don't calibrate as well as a CRT. What's most important to me is what I see on the screen is what I get back from our labs in the form of prints with no surprises. I am sure there will be as many out there that will disagree, but CRT's work best for us.

Vince

[Samanax]

I would look at Samsung or LG LCD monitors. I've had real good luck with Samsung LCD monitors (have 3 and no problems...oldest one is 6 years old already and still works fine).

The thing you want to do after you get you monitor is calibrate it. I use the X-Rite i1 Display 2 to calibrate my Samsung LCD monitor once a month.

[donniecs]

I've always had good luck with Viewsonic. The Viewsonic Pro series 23" (VP2365wb) is in your price range at $350 USD. The bigger the screen that you can get, the easier it will be to work on. Especially when post processing high resolution photographs. If you get real into it and want to properly calibrate your monitor so you're not surprised by your prints check out the Datacolor Spyder series color calibration tools (or similar devices) for your monitor. I used them at school and they are easy to use and yield good results. Don't over look your graphics card either, a good monitor with a bad graphics card is sort of a waste also.

[mschwarz]

I'm an amateur (and probably will be for life ). I did a lot of research on different monitors, and CRT is the way to go, unless you have a lot of money for a high-end monitor ($800+). Since I didn't, I kept poking around.

I found some good reviews on the Samsung 24" 2433BW. Good viewing angle, can be used for other purposes. I noted a couple of other folks who provided reviews on various sites that they've happily used it for photography/photoshop purposes. So far, I've had no complaints.

The key, is once you've got any monitor is to set up your color calibration. That will make a world of difference for you regardless.

I wish you the best of luck!