Who uses REAL monitors, who uses TVs, and who uses neither?

MattinSTL

MattinSTL

Sound Modulator
On most of the professional shoots I've been on I see the same little Sony 9" color monitor that I'm sure many of you have seen. It's a BIG BRICK for the little 9" screen... but the obvious reasons to use a professional monitor include precise color matching, over-scan, etc.

The reasons to use ANY kind of monitor expand to framing and composition, extremely precise focus, and to monitor the production so that you're instantly aware of everything that's going right or wrong. Once you use SOME kind of monitor you'll see how luxurious it is and you'll always want a larger referrence then the DVX lcd.

Many of the shoots I've been involved in have sudden schedule changes or location changes which often results in the need for a super-fast setup... and a good percentage of the time the subject arrives and we have to go with whatever we have... even if we'd like more tweaking. The gist is that on several occasions we don't get EXACT color matching on the monitor as what I have in the DVX. Since we're white balancing every shot change and I make sure everybody okays what they see in cam it's no big deal. What ends up happening is we just use the monitor to make sure the talent looks good and the shot looks good.

Even on the little 9" Sony you see SO much more then you'd ever notice on the DVX.

So my question is... How many of you pros are able to set up exact color matching every time? I guess if you have the monitor and the cam you should be able to do it very quickly... but still I wonder. Often times I see a warmer image in the DVX then I see on these little Sonys, but it's never been a problem (yet).

When I shoot by myself I use a Sharp Aquos for a monitor. I shopped around for a month or two before getting this lcd tv. Normally I detest the Sharp brand... but this particular monitor has really good color matching to the DVX straight out of the box... and you can tweak all parameters of the picture... plus flip the picture just like on the DVX lcd... so you can use it as a prompter or you can monitor a shot from the mirror perspective (like you might do to monitor yourself on cam).

I don't know if this is really amature to show up with an lcd tv and call it a monitor or not... but so far everybody that sees this setup is really impressed... without a closer look they think I spent a lot of money on this approach and yet it was DIRT CHEAP compared to a real monitor.

Any of you professional guys care to comment? I'm sure you'd say that you always get precise color matching with the DVX and monitor... but maybe some of you don't... and maybe you end up using your monitor like I always see them used... mainly as a tool for the director and producers... while the DP/cinematographer is primarily focused on the cam anyway?

My digi-cam couldn't perfectly sync with the lcd tv... so you see some odd bands between the individual color bars, but you don't see them in person... and I wanted to illustrate how good the color match is right out of the box.

DVX with Monitor.jpg
 
For my personal shoots, I use a JVC TM-H150CG, a 15" high res monitor.
It's got switchable 16:9 & 4:3 aspect ratios (your TV doesn't), A/B input etc.

A production monitor gives a better picture than a TV, but a TV is cheaper.

If it works for you, and gives accurate results with the final product, save some $$$. But you're still going to want a production monitor.
 
Thanks for the reply Pookie... at first I thought "Well CRAP, I could never afford something like that!"

Sh*t I could have got that for another $130 or so! The only thing I didn't like seeing was 35.2lbs... ouch. I'm already two-trippin' and three-trippin' into most shoots... I guess four-trippin' would just involve a little more trippin'.

I may pick one of those up after the winter cash-slump. Thanks for the tip!
 
MattinSTL said:
this particular monitor has really good color matching to the DVX straight out of the box... and you can tweak all parameters of the picture...
Click to expand...
Really? Well, I popped on my THX Optimizer glasses and the colors are very obviously out of alignment on the LCD monitor. Hold up a piece of blue gel and see if the four bars (1,3,5,7) are all blue. They're not, I promise. Maybe you could tweak it a little more and it would be accurate. But, right now, it's not even close.

A "production monitor" has extremely accurate controls for adjusting this parameter.

FWIW, your Sharp LCD is more accurate than my DVX LCD. Still, not perfect.
 
thisiswells said:
Really? Well, I popped on my THX Optimizer glasses and the colors are very obviously out of alignment on the LCD monitor. Hold up a piece of blue gel and see if the four bars (1,3,5,7) are all blue. They're not, I promise. Maybe you could tweak it a little more and it would be accurate. But, right now, it's not even close.



A "production monitor" has extremely accurate controls for adjusting this parameter.



FWIW, your Sharp LCD is more accurate than my DVX LCD. Still, not perfect.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the reply... but I guess I came across as a pompous ass in my original post. I'm not saying I have the answer... I was just wondering what you other guys are doing for monitors. Pookie's was the kind of response I was hoping for.

I think if somebody is shooting with NOTHING then they are seriously handicapped.

If you take a picture of the color bars on ANY monitor with an average digi-cam it's not likely to be accurate to reality when you post the pic on here... I tried to say that in the original post. The pic you see above is not quite how it looks in person... but I just wanted to illustrate that the color match is pretty good... RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. I bought a Panasonic monitor first and it wasn't even in the ballpark... and that one was about the same price as Pookie's professional monitor. I posted this for the little guys to consider a cheap option... that works better then you might expect.

Also... just since you're above post made me feel dumb for posting this thread... I had to get out a blue-gel and try your experiment.

I don't get it... what should they look like? 1,3,5,7 should all be blue right? This is with NO adjustments whatsoever... Blue Gel over the screen.

LCD Sharp Blue.jpg
 
The shades of blue are all different! On a production monitor, they would appear identical.
There's nothing to be concerned about, but adjustability is one of the big selling points of professional monitors.

Edit: Sorry if I made you feel dumb. Forgive me, please?

Edit: This may help:

"Professional monitors have a special switch, that, when depressed, turns off the red and green guns of the tube. This causes only blue to show on the tube. The effect on color bars is to create alternating bright and dark vertical columns. All the dark columns should be equally dark and all the bright columns should be equally bright. If the two outer bright columns don't match, then the chroma/saturation control on the monitor is turned until they do. For the inner bright columns, the hue/tint or phase control is turned until they match."

http://www.seanet.com/Users/bradford/ntscvideo.html
 
It's all a matter of $$$.
For a "low" cost alternative, your setup will do find, as long as what you get for the final product is what it's supposed to be. A production monitor will give a much better picture (sharpness and color), and I would bet one is on your short list. Color bars are a good guide for color matching, the closer the better, but there is one major blind spot with shooting video, as opposed to film. What is it (the final product) going to be seen on?
You can take a DVD to 10 peoples houses, hit PLAY, and see 10 different results. Every TV is unfortunatly different, so what is perfect on your system, will be different on virtually every other TV you watch on. CRT, LCD, Plasma, projection, all set up differently, some the way they were delivered, some tweaked by the owner.

Your setup is giving you feedback, letting you adjust things as best you can. Is a production monitor better? Yep. But as you say, you're ahead of those without any monitor, TV or otherwise.

When you get the cash move up, but what you have works too. Something for the "little Guys" to think about on their way up.
 
Pookie could you please help Wells make his point? If you pop a blue gel on your JVC does it look like my blue gel pic or are all the bars the same shade of blue? I realize we're dealing with a band of spectrum filtration... so theoretically the blue gel will pass the darkest blue bar as if it were a clear gel... but again I'm dealing with two limitations. My digi-cam... and the posting process. While the monitor looks much better in person... and I want to smash my digi-cam because it won't photograph the colors I'm seeing... I do still see 2 seperate intensities of blue... the first two bars and the second two appear in person as they appear (within the reasonable acceptance that a mid-range digi-cam will NOT photograph a monitor as your eyes see it) in the last photo.

The first two bars and the last two bars are nearly identical to each other... but how could they be identical across the board?

Could you post a picture to illustrate your point?

For anybody else who reads this can you pop on a blue-gel on your professional monitor and prove this point?

I don't see how you can result in 4 equal shades of blue. This experiment will change depending on the particular blue gel you use and the digital camera you use to take the picture... but I'd like to see where somebody gets the SAME color across all 4 bars.

For the record I have a stack of gels about an inch thick and I tried 5 differnt blue gels. It looks the same on everything I have in the house.

I should add that it wasn't really a cost issue... size and weight were a big concern of mine... and a professional monitor in LCD configuration is thousands of dollars. I actually think that JVC you mentioned is bargain priced... on every paid thing I've done so far it's practically run 'n gun even when it really shouldn't be. So far my paid work involves interviews with "important" people who need to get in and out or need us to get in and out... I rarely have the luxury of enough setup time... and I'm usually the one carrying everything in and carrying everything out.

I will still get a monitor like that soon... just for the planned shoots where I have that time. Accuracy is never a bad thing... and clearly that's the way to go. Honestly I didn't think I was that far off though.
 
Like Pookie said, there's nothing wrong with your monitor.

The problem is it (by nature of being an LCD) does not have a "Blue Gun Only" mode, thus the only way to "simulate" this alignment method is a blue gel -- a specific shade of blue gel, which happens to be the exact one I have in my THX Glasses. Pro-Level LCD's have a substitute method which works about as well as "Blue Only" except it isn't blue.
 
The new panasonic 17" HD TFT monitor has a blue only switch.. and its incredible. A little expensive, but has a built in scope etc so i see where the cost is.

For the low cost solution a ton of people including me have used as a editing monitor, is the Toshiba 14" flat. It has a 16:9 switch.

For production and the DVX, I have a cheap 13" round tube crt that i drilled a handle to the top of. Works good enough for me in the field, and I have it calibrated to be pretty accurate. The only thing I really care about on a field monitor is the focus, and to see little things that the eyepiece cant see.
 
Wow, that's good to know about the 17" Panasonic LCD. Sounds really nice.

he only thing I really care about on a field monitor is the focus, and to see little things that the eyepiece cant see.
Click to expand...
Agreed. That's all that really matters for me. It's easy to obsess over tiny differences in color, but, like Pookie said, it will never appear the same on every TV because they're all setup different.
 
That's the point I was trying to make in the opening post. The analog out monitor I have on my editing desk is a Toshiba 14" flat-screen (not lcd).

What I was asking is how often you guys take the time to set up specific color matching with your field monitors? For most of the shoots I've been on the lighting guy has brought his own monitor... or some other person involved brings a monitor... even though we may hook it up to my camera. Then the next thing you know it's "let's go go go... the guy is here"... and I'm rolling before anybody got a very precise match on the monitor... then the director (or whoever is in charge) sits there and gives me a sign to change framing or push in... or points to the shiny spot that's developing on this guy under a hot light.

The gist is that absolute color accuracy has rarely been addressed in my own personal experience... and maybe that's unusual? I don't know... that's why I started this thread. Sure if it's a significant budget and everything is well planned ahead of time... but that's not what I'M shooting most of the time.

So I wondered how everybody uses a monitor, what they use, and how often they precisely match color.

I didn't want to get so focused on my little run 'n gun solution (that lcd is connected to the pod via a magic arm by the way... any position... any angle... any distance from the pod) and I can pull up the whole mess and move to a new setup in 30 seconds. What is it? Fast, Cheap, Good... pick any two? Well it is fast and cheap.:grin:
 
pookie said:
A little expensive.......?

LOL
Click to expand...

yeah.. i thought that too when i first saw it.. who the hell would pay $2700 for a 17" computer screen... until I actually used it last week. The monitor uses EBU colors the same as a CRT, and it has 2 SDI inputs, auto switching between HD and SD.. and the damn waveform.. and DC powered with a Bauer mount.. The thing is deadly accurate, and very sharp.

plus it has a split screen mode that framegrabs a frame and stores it.. then shows the other half live, so if you shoot one day then come back the next you can match lighting etc.

Blue gun.. well you got the gist.. alot of stuff in there for $2700.

man im starting to sound like a panasonic pimp lol.. I wish they came out with something crappy (like that retarded anamorphic adapter) again so I could ***** about something.
 
I can't believe I did this... but after putting all that stuff away after the first reply... thinking "Okay all the bars are blue, what now?"

"They aren't the same shade of blue."

Jeez you mean they can be the same shade? I've got a stack of gels an inch thick so does it matter what blue gel you use?

Well I found my sheet of THX Optomizer Glasses blue.

Can I be in the club now? :grin:

More Blue Gel2.jpg
 
your getting there.. your colors look good but your brightness is too low. The 3 purge bars on bottom right should be black black grey instead of black black black. once you set that you will see some blue down there, on both the left and right.
 
Oh come on! I'm not touching this thing any more tonight!:grin:

XRay Glasses.jpg


I should add that throughout this whole discussion I haven't changed anything but gels. I never touched any adjustments on that TV once ever in a year. Once again today I was on a shoot with that same little Sony... that's why I posted this thread... I was curious if everybody uses that darn Sony.
 
I have a Toshiba 13 inch flat screen TV that I only use to edit with. I don't watch any tv or dvds with it. Later on I will get a "rea" production monitor but this Toshiba is serving its purpose rather well.
 
That Toshiba has actually been recommended by a lot of people as an ideal editing deck.

I actually have a much poorer solution for field monitoring than Matt uses, and the results normally shine. I have a 9" Audiovox LCD television with AV inputs.

There is no straight out color matching ability built in and the picture in general is extremely soft and fuzzy around the edges. This makes getting an accurate monitor impossible, except when you know how things match up. It is almost like running a complete equation in your head, but since my paid gigs are nonexistent, it serves my filmmaking purposes and let's people watch what is being filmed.

I understand the point behind a good monitor setup, but the cost is extremely prohibitive for most people (including myself)

I would like to add that this is one of the first inteligent discussions I have ever read regarding the pro's, con's, uses, and benefits of a variety of monitor sources, so I found this to be one of the best practical discussions in a long time. Great thread!
 
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