video monitor suggestions/calibration ideas

[edwin]

hi all,

i am a portrait studio photographer just switching over to digital with my purchase of the s-2!

in my first shoot, i hooked up the s-2 video out to a tv video in, and made a lot of my lighting decisions using the tv monitor. now i realize how stupid that was.

the tv (monitor) must have been severely bright, because when i stopped down the camera to look good on the tv, all my shots were severely underexposed when i viewed them on my calibrated computer monitor. also, the colors on the video monitor were way off too--that should have been my first clue.

so, obviously, i need to calibrate the tv monitor to some standard, or get a different monitor to view my shots. i find the 1.8" lcd too small to discern lighting patterns on a face.

i don't know how to go about it or where to turn. are there some popular video monitors in use? what are the procedures to go about calibrating them.

or, are most people using computers to do the viewing? if so, doesn't that take longer to view the just taken shot? (i like the instant viewing on the video out a lot.)

any help would be appreciated,
thanks,
edwin

[cthornhill]

First let me say that I can not recomend using a TV monitor to judge portrait images - the display systems are not really up to it in my opinion. I would suggest using a computer monitor that has been profiled.

Now that that is out of the way, if I was going to view on a TV monitor and try and make any decisions, I would get one I could adjust. A studio style monitor from a major brand (say Sony, Ikigami, Mitsu, or JVC) should allow you to set the color temp overall, and might feature bars for NTSC.

Next you need a chard showing grey scales so you can set the montior to display a range of grey (16 shades for NTSC). These are also available on line or from your local CCTV/broadcast supply firm. You will want to turn the monitor brightness down - way down in my experiance. If you point the camera at the chart and adjust to see the range of grey, that is about as far as you can go without more gear. You might want to also look at your MacBeth color chart also to see if you have the phase right, but if you have bars, you can expect to set it with them. If you don't know from bars, get a little help on line or in the store on NTSC montior set up.

The S2 can capture way more colors and shades than NTSC can show. It has way more dynamic range than any NTSC TV signal. If you choose to view your S2 images on the NTSC screen, you are only going to see a little bit of what is really going on. Think about using a computer and a monitor - it is going to be a lot more accurate (well a tube montior will be anyway).

Good Luck - ask more if this did not make some sense.

Yours,

Cecil