Digital Video - October 2007 - (Page 28)

IN REVIEW IMAGE CONSCIOUS LH80W: VIEWING ANGLES VS. BRIGHTNESS HORIZONTAL ANGLES MEASURED ANGLE (degrees) 90 (straight on) 80 70 60 50 45 MEASURED ANGLE (degrees) 90 (straight on) 80 70 60 50 45 Like the LH2600W’s backlight and contrast knob, two of the LH80W’s knobs do double-duty. Again, unfortunately, contrast and backlight share a single knob, as do peaking and phase control. This is somewhat forgivable in a smaller monitor, but I’d rather have my backlight controls be menu-driven only and take up a little more real estate for a separate peaking adjustment, especially for an onboard monitor that’s going to be moving around with the camera. As I would want to constantly re-calibrate it to a given environment, I’d use the four adjustments independently, having to go through the menus to re-assign each knob every time I wanted to use it. The LH80W has three user-assignable function buttons which give you easy access to the blue-only, waveform, or several other options. Once again, I like the built-in waveform option, but here I wish that I had the option to put it full screen. On a small monitor such as this, the corner waveform is only of marginal use. Calibrating the monitor to SMPTE color bars from the HPX500 connected via component input, I found that I was able to set chroma and phase fairly precisely. I found the positive click steps in the adjustment knobs to be slightly too READING (footlamberts) 940 880 540 240 160 150 READING (footlamberts) 1200 1100 760 500 220 170 LOSS IN BRIGHTNESS (%) 0 (base) -7 -43 -75 -83 -84 LOSS IN BRIGHTNESS (%) 0 (base) -9 -37 -69 -82 -85 much. Adjusting my PLUGE on the color bars, I really would have preferred a setting between 24 and 25 points of brightness for the given environment in which I was calibrating the monitor. The LH80W has the same selection of screen markers available as the larger monitor, and the same center mark, which is even larger on this small screen. Color temperature settings, surprisingly, are just as impressive as the LH2600W with all the same controls. The monitor offers four user save settings so that it can recall, on power up, the color, marker and function settings for four different users or situations. It uses a surprisingly low amount of power, easily getting four to five hours from an Anton Bauer Dionic battery. 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). Outdoors, it’s no match for natural sunlight, even with the backlight pushed to the max. DV Jay Holben was a director of photography for eight years before turning to produce and direct full time. He’s a regular contributor to American Cinematographer magazine. www.dv.com Looking at viewing angles, the LH80W unfortunately is not nearly as impressive as its 26” sibling, but more in line with traditional LCD monitors (see chart). Keeping in line with less-than-10-percent image loss for critical work, this monitor has a viewing angle of about 20 degrees. Anything beyond 40 degrees in any direction and it becomes rather ineffective. As far as features, the LH80W has nearly all of the features of the LH2600W, and then some. Although it only has two traditional input options (SDI and component), the third input is very interesting: “VF,” for viewfinder. With select Panasonic cameras, you can connect a cable to the viewfinder port and use the monitor instead of the camera’s normal viewfinder. I tried such a setup with Panasonic’s AG-HPX500 P2 HD—the downside to it is that the image is still black-and-white and small, one of my few complaints about that camera. I’m not sure why anyone would choose this option, when you can get a beautiful, crisp color image from the camera in component or SDI output. The only thing I would miss when using this monitor as a viewfinder (through SDI or component) is the Focus Assist function on the HPX500, which is fantastic. The LH80W has a blue-only function for color calibration and built-in waveform, as well as peaking and red focus identification modes. For a camera assistant, this is a fantastic monitor to help with focus. The image is large enough, and clear enough, to discern detail—and with the help of peaking, focus is a snap. I have never been a fan of color focus assist systems as they seem to get in the way, offering more false positives than any real help. It’s nice that this monitor has a resolution control on the red focus assist, giving 30 steps of intensity, but I still found it less useful than standard peaking, which has the same amount of control over the intensity. The monitor also features a Pixel-to-Pixel function that shows the image 100 percent, cropped of course. For more critical focus work, this is an excellent feature. 28 dv october 2007 VERTICAL ANGLES 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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