Digital Video - October 2007 - (Page 26)

IN REVIEW Utilizing the BT-LH80W indoors, it has a bright, sharp image and fantastic color reproduction, as long as you’re viewing it dead-on (or within 20 degrees). IMAGE CONSCIOUS These two Panasonic LCD monitors will please the eye. BY JAY HOLBEN DV EXCELLENCE AWARD OF T SCORE LH2600W LH80W hroughout the course of my career as a cinematographer, I’ve seen a lot of high-end LCD screens, some better than others. While reviewing the Panasonic AG-HPX500 camera for DV (Sept. 07, PROS: LH2600W: Incredibly sharp, great color reproduction, several input options, wide viewing angle, excellent color adjustments, user friendly. LH80W: Good color and resolution, flexibility in user functions, built-in waveform, several inputs, low power usage. CONS: No delineated scale on the built-in waveform, backlight and contrast share same control knob. BOTTOM LINE: Both of these monitors are high-performance tools with great color and clarity. The LH2600W is one of the best LCD monitors I’ve ever worked with. Excellent tools for production, with some post possibilities for the LH2600W. MSRP: $4,950 and $2,700 CONTACT: www.panasonic.com/broadcast page 16), I had a chance to work with two of Panasonic’s newest LCD monitors, the BT-LH80W and BTLH2600W. The 26” LH2600W comes loaded with pretty much every feature you could want, including four input options, HD/SD SDI, component video, Y/C (SVideo) and composite video. With a resolution of 1366x768, the LH2600W monitor operates in 480, 576, 720, 1035 and 1080 formats. Performance-wise, the first thing I look at with LCD monitors is their viewing angles. How far off of dead center can I look at the monitor without a loss in image brightness and quality? While Panasonic lists an impressive 176-degree viewing angle for the LH2600W—and that spec is definitely true—there is considerable loss in image brightness past 120 degrees. Seeking a simple method for quantifying this brightness loss, I turned to my Sekonic spotmeter and a protractor. While focusing a connected camera on a white card to get an even field of white across the screen, I set up the spotmeter at specific angles and measured the illumination at a given point in the screen. The chart shows my results based on several passes. For normal viewing, in my opinion, anything up to a 50 percent loss in brightness is acceptable, in which case Panasonic is very close within a 176degree viewing angle. For critical work, however, I would consider anything more than 10 percent loss to be substantial—in which case the LH2600W still has a 50degree viewing angle both horizontal and vertical (about 25 degrees left/right and up/down). The monitor has a blue-only function for color calibration, along with built-in waveform and a Pixel-to-Pixel function that shows the image at 100 percent size. This is an excellent feature if you’re using the monitor for critical image judgment or as an on-set monitor for focus judgment. I was a little frustrated that contrast and backlight knobs are one in the same (differentiated through a menu option). Although I would rarely adjust the backlight, it’s far too easy to have this knob set on backlight and believe that you’re adjusting contrast. The knobs are pressto-activate, which reduces your chances of accidental adjustments. You press the buttons once to change the setting and again to save the settings. An amber LED lights up to let you know that your particular setting is now different from the factory setting. This is somewhat helpful, but in most cases these amber LEDs will always be on. I’d love to be able to set this LED default to instead alert me if changes are made from my settings, not factory—much like a “!” warning in camera viewfinders. The monitor’s five user-assignable function buttons give you easy access to the blue-only, waveform, Pixel-to-Pixel, underscan and several other options. I really like the built-in waveform option, but I wish that I had the ability to put it full-screen, or at least larger than just a www.dv.com 26 dv october 2007 http://www.panasonic.com/broadcast http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - October 2007

Cover Contents Letters DV Update R&D Fest Circuit Light Brigade Follow Focus Shootout Image Conscious Instant Expert Close-Ups Eastern Europe Exploit Call of the Wild Four Principles of Storage Storage Media Production Diary

Digital Video - October 2007

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