Monitors & Calibration Advice

Hi everyone,

Been a while since I have been on here. New baby, new house and new job has made zero time for much else!

I was basically thinking about buying two new monitors as the two I have at the moment (an old Hyundai Imagequest and a free Acer I got from my work) even when calibrated with my X-Rite i1 Display Pro are totally out of whack and different temperatures

Now the thing is what monitors to get. I am in no way a pro photographer in any way however I would like to try my hand at making some money in the future if I can. The lab I used in the past for my wedding album was Loxley Colour and on their website they suggest using sRGB.

I am a computer programmer so a resolution of 1900 x 1200 (16:10) is preferred rather than a letter box 16:9.

I have seen a couple such as the BenQ BL2411PT 9H.L99LA.RBE and Dell UltraSharp U2412M.

I am currently leaning towards the BenQ however I can be swayed!

Price is important however I can be a bit flexible if the monitors are better and will be more fit for use. USB hubs / audio are not important. Only really the use for photography and screen real estate are important (with the ability to be used for gaming as well).

If anyone has any suggestions they would be very much welcome before I walk into making a mistake that I regret, by buying two BenQ's if they are going to be bad lol.

Thanks !!

I use two of these


http://www.scan.co.uk/products/24-iiyama-prolite-x2485ws-b1-ips-led-monitor-displayport-dvi-vga-1920x1200-300cd-m-5m1-5ms-speakers-

1920 x 1200.

Work great!

Looks good, more or less the same specs as the BenQ but with 350cd/m2 (vs 300) and the secondary contrast values (what are these for anyway!) are 5m:1 (vs 20m:1). The BenQ also has the adjustability with having a better stand.

Plus it would be £400 for two of the Iiyamas instead of £500.

I have the Dell Ultrasharpe I have been pleased with it.
Derek

The U2412M pentax?

And another monitor I am now looking at is the Dell Ultrasharp U2413. It seems to be quite a good spec.

It has a wide gamut however which covers sRGB and aRGB. I have my K5 set to sRGB and Loxley says to use sRGB so should the U2413 even be on my radar or would it just be a lot easier if I just chose to use the BenQ instead of mess about with wide gammuts?

Plus you can daisy chain the U2413 with display port cables which is cool

I have had trouble calibrating some monitors with the supplied software with some devices.

The ArgyllCMS and dispcalGUI (both OpenSource) are excellent at allowing multi-monitor calibration.

http://www.argyllcms.com/ and
http://dispcalgui.hoech.net/

Might be worth a shot
Matt

Whilst ArgyllCMS & dispcalGUI are a little klunky in use, they work very well on my Dell Ultrasharp 2209WA using a Pantone Huey.

As an aside, maybe Dwiea shouldn't worry so much about spec for monitors - yes, there are differences in their maximum brightness, but when calibrating for photo editing that should be pulled down to about 120 cd/m2. The difference between 300 and 350 cd/m2 maximum brightness isn't of practical significance - just marketing puff.

Andrew

Shhhhh don't tell my wife that. She won't let me get new monitors then

I wasn't actually worrying about the brightness, although I know the TBE version of the BenQ has a problem with the minimum brightness (can't go low enough).

I care more about the getting consistent colour between two monitors, how the blacks look and ghosting (because they will be used for games).

I finally decided! I have gone for the NEC PA242W I'm hoping it is nice lol ... it is a lot more expensive than the ones in my original post!

I am going to buy one first and see how it goes then possibly buy another NEC or a BenQ for secondary monitor.

Thanks for everyone's advice

The NEC monitors are impressive, so I'll be interested to hear your first impressions.

They are awesome

I managed to get the Finance Directory (my wife) to allow me to buy a second one after a while and I do not regret it one little bit!