APPLE 23inch vs LACIE 321 vs EIZO s2110? help!

[ianhhh]

hiya .. i am tryin to choose a new lcd display for photo retouch/repro, cmyk workflow, calibrated ..

iis either lacie 321, eizo s2110 or apple 23inch..... i know lacie are good but prefer 16:9 ratio... love the apple display but not sure if eizo would be a lot better quality image+color... all same price ish... any one reviewed or compared these or any experience... ? please help!!!

thanks
ian

ps is powerripx for mac any good?

[briarrose]

No experience with any of the above...but after a mad weekend researching all three, (have to spend some money before the end of the year, for taxes! :-/), I found that actually, the Apple Cinema ranked considerably lower than the other two...with the Eizo number one, and LaCie close on it's heels.

Here's a pretty comprehensive review of an Eizo (compared to others): http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/04/do_the_new_19/
and another, as well as a review of the Apple: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/30/all/

and finally: http://shutterbug.com/techniques/dig...om/1104sb_lcd/

I had more specific reviews this weekend...but I've already trashed 'em--and these are the ones that I remembered.

Me, I bought the LaCie Photon20 Vision II mentioned in the Shutterbug article...because I could afford it, and not the Eizo I wanted, or the LaCie 321 that I figured was next best. NEXT time I'll get the Eizo! Between that--and my current Philips 180P as a second flat screen, I'll have lots of monitor...but not much desktop left!

(Sorry--can't report back on it yet--it won't show up for another couple of days.)


Best of luck to you--

[ianhhh]

cheers, thanks for your info....

after a lot deliberation i decided on none of the above and bought the eizo s2410... the price difference between this and the 21inch is relatively small, especially when considering they are guaranteed for 5years ..and it is only a fraction more than the 23inch apple display [guaranteed for 1year!]..

wil post a comment on here when i get it..

[briarrose]

Oh, well done, you!!! That's the decision I WOULD have made, had my pockets been just a WEE bit deeper... Do tell us how you like it, so that we can all be pea green with envy!

Their 22" ColorEdge monitor would be a dream, of course, but close on to 5K isn't even something I can dream about right now...the Flexscans are closer to a decent pricepoint for me...

[tetsuo]

Dell's 24" 2405 FPW is very good also.. it happens that LaCie, apple and dell 23/24" uses the same philips LCD

[briarrose]

While I drool at the thought of a 24" screen, I've read a couple of reviews by professional photographers who both mention that it has an extremely poor viewing angle--so much so, that turning your head slightly alters the image significantly--and that images can look very washed out, very easily. I haven't seen one, so this is second-hand knowledge, but I thought I'd mention it, in case anyone stumbles on this in the future! (Don't take my word for it--just notice that someone mentioned it--and then do extra research on it, before making a decision. I see that the specs for it mention 170/170...the same as on the Lacie 321, so) Tom's Hardware guide reviewed the Dell, the LaCie 321, and the LaCie's "twin", the NEC 2180UX, and called the Dell "too bright for photography" and "too slow for video"--but it was their top choice for CAD work, which has different requirements.

Of possible note to others who might find this thread - I just stumbled on this: http://www.consumersearch.com/www/co...s/reviews.html - which actually "reveiws the reviews", so that you can see which reviews you should attach more "weight" to, in making your choices. It looks quite good--and I must say that, as a geek, who spends much time on the web, reading reviews, I felt it to be fairly accurate in it's choices as to which were more exhaustive and thorough--something that is particularly important when looking for highly specialized equipment, like a good LCD for photographers!

Finally--again, for future readers, I received my LaCie Photon20VisionII (WHY such a silly name????) day before yesterday, and would like to offer two cents' worth on it, thus far. (NB: this is a highly subjective quasi-review--and is not meant to be exchaustive, as there are plenty of good reviews in that category out there already. This is just meant to be my thoughts on the points that are most important to ME. )

First--I also own an older Philips 180P LCD, calibrated regularly with my GretagMacbeth EyeOne2 Display, ($1100, when I bought it several years ago--and more or less the high end of mid-range montors at the time), and a $500 Cornea CT18-something or other, purchased as a backup, about a year later.

The Philips has been FABULOUS for me...with warm, rich colors, no dead pixels at all. The colors in my prints have always been reasonably accurate, whether I was editing using soft-proofing, then printing to my own photo printer, or editing without soft-proofing, and sending off to my lab. A few images would come back slightly washed out, or a little too light, but not enough to upset me, or for me to notice a pattern, really. I'd always been puzzled by reviewers who claimed that LCDs were too bright for photo editing--and that prints would always come back darker--since that was never my experience.

Well--now I know why!

My new, LaCie 20" LCD (which has a SUPER thin frame--and is actually just barely larger than my Philips 18", with it's significantly larger frame) is BRIGHT. Knock your socks off bright. So bright, that I saw things in my photos I'd never seen before...and they all looked pallid and washed out...but reading text was on the Net was heavenly. It made my Philips sitting right next to it, look almost...*dirty*, in comparison.

I ignored the brightness initially, and played around with the swivel, and height adjustment (it moves beautifully, and easily--unlike my Philips, which doesn't swivel at all...and needs two hands, for any adjustments). Then I got down to business and calibrated it--looking forward to using "Advanced" on my EyeOne2 for a change (my Philips doesn't allow any OSD adjustments other than brightness using a DVI connector)...and was horrified to discover that the enticing list of adjustments my LaCie had...aren't available if you're using a DVI...and my vid card only has two DVI connections. Oh, you can SEE 'em, alright...but if you try to choose any of them, you geta "Digital Video Input No Access" error message.

*sigh...*

So I calibrated using "Easy", as usual...and was very pleased to see that the final curves at the end of the calibration looked quite good.

Unfortunately, my Philips was now using the LaCie profile, instead of its own profile...and that was NOT good. So I used my graphics card (NVidia GeForce 6800 GPU) to assign individual profiles to each monitor. But for some reason, it didn't work. It SAID each monitor was using a separate profile...but it wasn't SHOWING that.

So I did some research online, and discovered a marvelous little Control Panel applet from Microsoft, called Color Settings http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en . It allows you to assign individual profiles to dual monitors, printers, and scanners...you can set it up to remind you to calibrate, if you like...and it even has a cool display that shows you a graphical representation of the color space of each profile installed on your PC...and you can pick two of them (like, say, your dual monitor profiles!) and compare them, via an overlay. (My LaCie has a considerably larger gamut than my Philips, according to that little demonstration...they're the same in the middle...but the LaCie has wider borders all around the Philips. Kinda cool to look at! )

Using the Color Settings tool, I successfully assigned the appropriate profiles...and once again, my Philips was back to its normal, warm, slightly dark self...

But I still had the problem of brightness, with the LaCie. It was OBVIOUS that if I edited a photo on it--it would print darker. MUCH darker...and that's not acceptable. But I'd read that while the LaCie didn't have a setting to lower the backlight, it did allow you change something called "light view" settings--so that you could choose either Daylight or Night, and then "text", "movie", or "photo", for each. So I tried it. And while there was a definite change for each...even "photo" was still too bright.

Last resort...I switched to the OSD, to change the one thing I KNEW I could change--the brightness. (Yes, I knew this wasn't optimal...but I was desperate!) So I lowered the brightness to about 60...which gave me *close* to what I saw on my Philips...but much, much more contrasty and velvety looking...and if I was already getting some washed out prints from my Philips editing...it would logically be MUCH worse, on the LaCie...so I was about to decide that maybe I would just have to do all my adjustment layers on my Philips...then switch over to the LaCie for zoomed in retouching work (and with it's high contrast, it'll be a DREAM for that!), then final tweaking on the Philips again...when found a review on Luminous Landscape for ColorEyes http://www.integrated-color.com/cedi...ng.html--which is software that you can use to match luminance levels facross dual monitors (as well as providing smoother color transitions, and quite a few other things which I didn't think were all that important, at the time...because, frankly, I had no interest in spending another $180 or so on color managment.)

BINGO!!!!

I installed a demo (good for 10 uses or 10 days), and told it to set the luminance to 200cd/m2 on the LaCie--the same as my Philips. And then I sat back and watched, while it went through a set of 75 patches a couple of times (it will spend a great deal of time running grey scale patches, making minor adjustments to them, each time it runs...and you can see your screen changing, as it works). Wow. At the end--I had a significantly less contrasty image...my screen was dimmer...and yet I still had rich colors and incredible shadow detail!

A quick hop over to my website--showed me that my photographs were now looking almost EXACTLY like images I've printed in the past--right down to my few "problem" images--where the prints were slightly different in color, and looked washed out. I can't wait to send a series of test prints off to my lab--both some old prints, and some new ones, to see if this is really as good a solution as I think it is...but I'm hopeful!

Having solved my display woes, I decided to watch a movie (I don't own a tv, so my LCDs do double duty as movie screens). Movie response was...okay. Not great...and there were a few times when there was a bit of lag between movement and sound...but it was only momentary, and not that big of a deal. Oddly, there was virtually NO shadow detail in anything I watched on it--just big expanses of black...while moving over to my darker appearing Philips, the overall scenes were darker, but details in blacks and greys were clear. I haven't tried to resolve this yet, since it's relatively unimportant, but I found it interesting.

The downside of the lack of detail in shadows during the movie...was that I could clearly see not one, but THREE dead pixels--two dim ones, and one bright one that might actually be a cluster of pixels. Naturally, the bright one is almost dead in the middle of the screen--and LaCie's policy for dead pixels apparently covers replacement for "5 scattered or 2 clustered"... (THG covers policies for many manufacturers: http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/03/19/penalty/ ), so I'm out of luck. Fortunately, it's not noticable unless you have a large expanse of black or dark colors...so it's not likely to affect my work in Photoshop...it's just...annoying, to have my first dead pixels on the "best" monitor I've ever purchased. :/

So the bottom line is...if you can't go past the $1000 mark...this monitor is an excellent choice...but if you can--it's probably worth it to move up to the LaCie 321, at $1500ish, for the CRT gamut, the extra inch of screen, and the OSD for DVI, as well as analog.

[tetsuo]

well, here is a very simple preview of my dell's 24"

after calibration with i1v2, i compared the ICC to sRGB and to my surprise, the gamut range is almot 20% bigger than sRGB. it totally covers sRGB1996 2.1 and it exceeds my sony's CRT gamut range.

the monitor has got card reader built-in. which is kinda niffy.

also the monitor accepts 5 different inputs.
you can input s-video into it. and you can have the s-video show up in your screen like those sony TV (2nd channel shows up in a smaller box.) same goes to other inputs. you can even input both DVI into it and it runs 50% resolution to virtually enable dual screen in a single 24" good if you have 2 PC and a single monitor. in my case it would be my server.

dell in singapore has a policy of allowing you to swap 1 to 1 for 90 days no matter what reason you have. even allows full refund if you have no complains about it for 30 days. and gives a 3 year warranty.

the only thing i have to complain is that my old crt is 0.20 dot pitch. while this is a 0.26 dot pitch. so per pixel it looks bigger.. even my laptop has got a 0.17 dot pitch.
running 1900x1200 in 15.4" and now 1900x1200 in 24"

the luminance is a ridiculous 493 after calibration.. had to tune down brightness and contrast almost to the minimal to get it to 250

[briarrose]

And let's not forget...it IS 24"!

Sounds like you've got a winner there...and in the end--all the reviews in the world can't tell you the answer to "are YOU happy with it?" If you are--and it works for you--that's what matters! (I like that 1 to 1 90 day swap policy...it means you could make sure you don't get stuck with any dead pixels, for one thing. That was one of the important factors in my purchasing my Philips, originally--their dead pixel replacement policy...that--and their next-day replacement warranty. (Pretty important if you're facing a deadline!)

It's good to hear individual experiences with equipment...it helps everyone make better choices in the future--so keep it up!

[tetsuo]

well almost happy with it.. a pity it needs a AC to power it. i cant get a UPS to power it for long to bring it along for my location shoots. sigh.. but it's awesome for me..


btw regards to dead pixel.. DONT SWEAT on it. my laptop has changed screen 3 times since i last got it. but it seems better and better each time. from 100 lum to 140 and now it's 180 luminace.the dead pixels can come up after 1 month of usage. no dead pixel on day 1 doesnt mean no dead pixel forever.

[briarrose]

LOL--well, that IS a little inconvenient...but it seems like a small price to pay, overall.

And yeah, you're right about the dead pixels... I've just been lucky until now, I guess--so I was pretty surprised to have to deal with them. It's a minor annoyance, though--it certainly doesn't interfere with my editing, so I can't really complain.

BTW--I checked out your website, and really enjoyed it. It's got a real "cutting edge" feel to it, which goes very well with your photography.

[tetsuo]

lol. a pity my gamut range of the laptop sucks.. oddly. i changed my laptop LCD 3 weeks ago. it was 7000k. 1 week ago it was 6800k. just today it's 6500k. i'm like OMG.... but luminance dropped very little from 179-173. gonna have to figure a way to power the LCD else i am force to buy a honda generator for my work..

( i calibrate every week)

have been aiming at eizo coloredge 22" but in terms of business, i cant really justify it. unlike dell 24" which i can easily cover in just a day's worth of shoot. ( can almost buy 15 24" on a average month income.)

but anyway thanks for the compliment.

** i ddint know MS color control panel can assign profile to 2nd monitor. i have been living with unified icc profile and lucky me both are the same 24" dell.