InfiniteMac OSx86 - View Single Post - Reliability of OS X in a real production environment (on non-apple h/w)

lanceomni · 03-26-2009, 01:56 PM

Photography:
Despite the fact that your color gamet shrinks from Source>Computer>Print a good LCD that covers over the full gamet of the AdobeRGB 1998 color space is pretty handy. There are some Eizo and Lacie Monitors that are in the $1000USD range which are great. A decent monitor coupled with frequent color calibration should work fine.

Video:
Video output for viewing on a television with correct color/contrast will generally look a bit washed out on a computer monitor. Likewise, video that looks good on a computer monitor will appear a bit dark on a television (Now this has nothing to do with calibration its that computer monitors work much differently than a television. Ill try to dig up some references) You can use a good firewire deck or professional tv monitor designed for this use. Using the scopes feature on your editing software is very handy. I personally don't think you need a high end monitor to edit video. A decent LCD with the ability to adjust each color along with a color spectrophotometer (You can find these relativly inexspensive just be sure that they are a true "spectrophotometer" and not just a colorimeter)

Ratio:
Having two 20"+ monitors is nice for your editing software. We shoot everything in 1080i keeping in mind that we will be cropping to 3:4 SD this way in the future we can go back and re-export the video if needed.

Apple LCDS:
A note on Apple monitors. Im not a fan. My experience is only with older models so they may have corrected this but on the three models I have used you can not adjust the colors individually on the monitor itself. I think they are a bit overpriced.

Home Use
At home on my hack I run two extremely inexpensive 22" Acer monitors. I use a spectrophotometer every month to build a profile and they look great. Video work that I corect on my home machine looks fine when I view it at work and on professional monitors. Photography on the other hand tends to block up in the shadows a bit but I am aware of this and accept it for my personally family stuff. I mean at a 10th of the cost of a single good monitor I knew what I was getting.