Is a 7 in monitor adequate for DOF focus?

[RichW]

I'd like to start a discussion here to see what you guys think. We like these cameras because they can give us a shallow DOF. But that isn't the ultimate goal. We really want to be able to utilize dof SELECTIVELY.

The big challenge with the 7D, for me, is to get DOF right. To do so, I think it is really useful to have a large screen. The bigger the better. We need to be able to see if focus is correct for ALL PARTS of the image. We need to see how it will be seen on the big screen. Sometimes we will want only the key actor to be in focus, sometimes we will want several people to be in focus, and/or something in the background. This is not always easy to achieve, but my suggestion is, why not make that process as easy as possible?

What has your experience been ? Can the 7 inch monitors really do this? Should we be using 24 in monitors, like the Samsung 240 HD, perhaps?

 

[Barry_Green]

Depends on the monitor. Are there any 1920x1080 7" monitors? And if there were, how close would you have to be to it, to be able to see the full res -- four inches?

I have an 8" monitor that does the job fine, but it's because it has a pixel-to-pixel feature. When you put it in p-to-p mode, it's equivalent to something like a chunk out of 23" screen. But you're only seeing a piece of the scene, not the whole thing. When you put it in fullscreen mode you can see the whole frame, but at 800x480 it's not showing you the full extent of detail. The focus-in-red does help to know what's in focus and what's out, but it's a bit generous as to what it thinks is sharply in focus...

If you want to really be able to see the detail, and know for a fact what's in-focus and what isn't, a 24" monitor would be plenty adequate, as long as you're not 8 feet away from it. Get 3' away from a 24" monitor (with 1920x1080 res) and yeah, you'll know what's in focus and what isn't. Assuming, of course, that you're feeding that monitor a full HD signal (through HDMI/DVI or analog component HD) and not giving it s-video or composite video.

 

[stock]

do you think this http://www.breezesys.com/DSLRRemotePro/index.htm would work with video mode?

edit- it sounds like the eos utility does the same thing, nevermind.

 

[Kholi]

If I could see the 7D LCD at all times it would be plenty adequate...

A 5" Black and White SD production monitor is pretty adequate as well. I'm not sure why you need a large screen at all?