BenQ PG2401PT
One
question I get almost everywhere I go when giving a digital imaging program is
“What brand monitor do you recommend for digital photography?” There are as
many different answers to that question as there are brands and models. 20+
years ago, the new digital photography technology forced photographers to spend
some serious money on a good CRT monitor.
There was not that many affordable options out there and we knew we needed to
really have something that would yield a decent image. After all, we are visual
artists. We make corrections and enhancements on digital images based on what
we see on our monitors. If the monitors are not properly calibrated and
profiled, we are making changes on incorrect information. Its no wonder so many
photographers are having a problem with their color output. If the monitors are
not yielding proper information, everything downstream from there is going to
be effected.
Now… it’s over twenty-three years since I
gave up the stability of film for the world of digital capture. In the beginning,
before color spaces and practical color management, I would output a high-end
color transparency of a finished job that was used to let the client know what
the digital file was supposed to look like. Back then, clients were used to viewing transparencies and trusting the color. Digital photography on a monitor.... not so much... That was much too expensive of a
way to proof a digital photography project at a cost of about $125 per sheet of
8x10 film output. Then came the ability to purchase a colorimeter at a
reasonable price. That along with Adobe Photoshop’ version 5.5 that now had the
new color spaces sRGB, Colormatch, Adobe 1998, and ProPhoto, we started to have
better way to describe and predict our color output.
When
we moved from CRT monitors to the flat screen LCD monitors we use now, prices
dropped and many different brands appeared to give us many more choices for
digital imaging. With so many models available for just a few hundred dollars
each at the local electronics stores, many photographers started buying cheaper
monitors and relying on their colorimeters to get these inexpensive monitors to
look reasonably correct.
Well….
you get what you pay for like anything in life. Asking photographers to pay
$2500+ for the most expensive monitors is sometimes too much to ask for when we
see monitors with the same screen size for about $250 and at first glance think they look about
the same to us. Finding the correct balance of quality and price is a hard
thing to do.
For
the last few months I have been working with a new model monitor from BenQ, the
PG2401PT.
http://www.benq.us/product/LCD/PG2401PT This new model designed for accurate graphic
arts reproduction and professional photography with a price of just $999 is
that perfect balance. I knew it was going to be a great monitor when I first
plugged it in and opened my special calibration file I use to confirm color
values, and it looked perfect even before I profiled it with my X-Rite i1 Pro system.
This is a file I created years ago and use it to view on monitors or print output to be sure I’m on target with color brightness and saturation of my
digital images. You are welcome to have a copy by downloading the file by
clicking this link. http://www.divitalephotography.com/chart.zip
It’s
made up of different targets and setup numbers of white and black tones for both Photoshop’s 0-255 and Lightroom’s 0-100 value system. The key numbers to watch are the 240-245 white
After
profiling the BenQ monitor I noticed it looked the same and that’s not usually
the case after profiling… It just
looked that good right out of the box. This 24 inch monitor is set up for Adobe1998
and CMYK color conversions with an impressive list of specs. Monitors I’ve
worked with in the past with any specs close to this have been in the
$2000-$2500 range.
Proper
start to finish color management has been a big part of my success as a
commercial photographer. Without the best possible representation of the image
in the beginning of raw file processing, nothing you do from that point on has
the potential to be the best it can be. In this business, anything less that
perfection is just a picture.... and everybody's a photographer....and I mean everybody..... I want to craft fine photographs with every click of
the shutter.... not just take pictures......
