HPX250: Panasonic BT-LH910G LCD Video Monitor

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male_man

Active member
I didn't know where to post this.....but can the Panosonic BT-LH910G (or any on camera) monitor be used for displaying (accurately) what the camera is seeing?
Can you adjust these monitors for color accuracy? What would you recommend?
 
Traditional CRT display fr. Ikegami & Sony are still my preferred choice when it comes to absolute color accuracy. It's bloody expensive ($10-25 K). You can still find them as used for about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of the new unit and have a tech calibrated to factory specs.
 
The Pany LH910 is a good monitor for on-camera. Much better than the LCD screen on the 250. And Pany's 17 LCD monitor is great. I don't think anyone will be tugging around CRTs anymore. Those babies are heavy. I still have a Panasonic HD CRT in my studio, but it weighs about 80 lbs. And MOST, if not all, clients have a LCD, so it's best to work with a LCD to help match what they will be seeing. And, you should be using a waveform and vectorscope anyway.
 
Thanks for the response Lonewolf and JohnnyD............How would the Panasonic LH910 match with the hpx250?
 
I use the LH910 exclusively for its ability to accurately display Film Rec gamma on the Varicams and HPX3100 series cams. It's very good overall, 2nd to a CRT in color accuracy and certainly better than the 2" LCOS on the cam. The LCOS built in to the cam is about 300-500 kelvin off! It's not the most accurate color rendition. I learned the hard way recently on a shoot where I dialed in to 4.6K and it looked fairly OK on the field. But going back to the edit suite and the skin tone is something like 5.2K (too orangish). But thanks to 3-way color correction, it's fixed. This is where the 910 is needed the most but unfortunately it's so bulky to mount on the cam and it was a live, non-staged shoot.

The 910 has a nice plastic clear glass protection fr. stratches. But for critical focus, I still prefer to use the 2/3" cam's super sharp 2.5" CRT viewfinder display w/ full peaking. Mostly the 910 is mounted on top of the cam for producer/director to see or use as dailies w/ Film Rec gamma correction applied. The director & producer usually freak out to see how flat the image is and have doubts about lighting and contrast whenever I shoot in Film Rec gamma mode. This monitor makes shooting flat gamma shooting workflow reassuring to non-technically inclined people. They tend to think WYSIWYG on the monitor and explaining to them is futile.

It can certainly handle the HPX250's as a serious field monitor. May be a bit heavy to mount on top of the HPX250 though.
 
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Are you suggesting that the critical focus abilities of the monitor is not that good? I agree about the weight on the 250.
 
It's good only when you have excellent shading from strong ambient light. A monitor hood is definitely a must have. Night time or indoor shooting will not be a problem. It's fairly sharp and you can focus but if you're used to the 2" or 4" CRT viewfinder, I personally prefer it as it is simply much sharper, I mean tact sharp to focus. I can see extremely fine skin pores as black and white vs. the 910's rendition is based on the camera DSP's processing output. So if you shoot in a setting w/ an extra soft v. detail on the color matrix, it will make focus very difficult to determine the focus because you're taking the HD-SDi processed signal out from the camera to the monitor. You can boost the sharpness on 910 monitor, but very often forget to set it back to neutral. Still workable for most situations, but not an ideal tool to do critical focus in all type of scenarios. This is where I'd use the HPX-250's viewfinder, change it to B&W mode and adjust the peaking to a fairly high value. From there I can have greater certainty that the focus will be sharp. Others like the red color. Useful sometimes, but it's a big distraction in other situation.

Only if the HPX250 has a separate HD-SDI out for viewfinder monitoring and peaking feed to the 910, then it will be in par with a regular viewfinder. I don't see any HD-SDI output menu on the HPX250 where you can send peaking information. Just only on its internal VF.

Another problem I encounter from time to time is that when you're too far away from the monitor, this is where focus accuracy suffer. Pretty much it has to be within 3-4 inches for me to gauge focus on a continuous basis. With a traditional 2" CRT viewfinder, you're stuck to a fixed length (about .5" away) and it already have excellent ambient light shading. But the downside is that for long event shoot, it's not comfortable w/ the small 2" crt that you have to put your right eye all the time. In this case, a big 9" monitor to look straight on for long hours is much more pleasant to work with.
 
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That's interesting to know Lonewolf.........I rented a smallhd dp6 and didn't like the fact that, I couldn't adjust the colors/contrast and brightness. What about the marshall, manhatten, Ikan and TVlogic?
 
male_man said:
That's interesting to know Lonewolf.........I rented a smallhd dp6 and didn't like the fact that, I couldn't adjust the colors/contrast and brightness. What about the marshall, manhatten, Ikan and TVlogic?
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BT-LH910G is about $2.4K new now. It's not cheap. You're mostly paying for its high quality 3-D LUT that allows 10-bit image rendition. On top of that, it has superb fine tuning controls to color balance and matching w/ other type of monitor via its RGB bias and gain function. Although I use it exclusively for its unique Film Rec Cine Gamma display feature, it can certainly be used in other type of gammas as well. Another nice feature is its rugged AB gold mount and no clumsy adaptor. Pretty much I can use any Anton Bauer battery and power this along w/ the cam's portable power. No need to use buy different type of battery. Best way is to have a local dealer give you a hands on demo. Subjectively it's a very high quality field and studio monitor for the most demanding content producers. I don't have much direct hands on experience w/ Ikan or Marshall equivalent model for comparison.
 
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lonewolf2koc@hotmail.com said:
BT-LH910G is about $2.4K new now. It's not cheap. You're mostly paying for its high quality 3-D LUT that allows 10-bit image rendition. On top of that, it has superb fine tuning controls to color balance and matching w/ other type of monitor via its RGB bias and gain function. Although I use it exclusively for its unique Film Rec Cine Gamma display feature, it can certainly be used in other type of gammas as well. Another nice feature is its rugged AB gold mount and no clumsy adaptor. Pretty much I can use any Anton Bauer battery and power this along w/ the cam's portable power. No need to use buy different type of battery. Best way is to have a local dealer give you a hands on demo. Subjectively it's a very high quality field and studio monitor for the most demanding content producers. I don't have much direct hands on experience w/ Ikan or Marshall equivalent model for comparison.
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That panny monitor sounds like a sweet piece of gear that needs to be in my toolbox, but man it's heavy....3.7lbs without battery.......... Ablecine rent's it at $200/day....ouch!
I was looking at the TvLogic 7"...it sounds like a excellent on camera monitor weighing 1.7lbs without battery. I wonder if it's on the the level of that 910, if it is, I would get that due to it's lighter mass.
 
Gary Huff said:
What do you mean by "effectively"?
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When I threw up some bars I was having problems making adjustments to the monitor. It was as if the inputs stopped working, when you reached a certain point in the range. I found it very clunky. I don't know if that's a dp6 thing or just that particular unit...either way, I didn't like it. I had a Marshall to compare, and it adjusted very nicely.
 
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