I think 620 is more than reasonable, maybe people reading the post are not specing out the monitor he's offering which would be a grand at BH. Couple that with Nicks excellent work and work methodology and i'm sold. I currently have an IKAN monitor, and it just gets buy because of the flip function. Nick i'm interested.

i have the varizoom vz-tft7 (http://www.varizoom.com/monitors/tft7.php). 7" diagonal, 1440x240 pixel widescreen, with flip (horiz and vert) function. i got it with a carry case, li-ion battery, shoe mount, sunhood, 4" video cable, ac adapter and car adapter for $499.

thought i'd share the experience, as the varizoom site does not mention the flip capabilities of this monitor.

Varizoom
 

If it only had a higher resolution...
but thanks for sharing!

Not all LCD's are unreliable, like problems Nick had with his Lilliputs. And just because something is a TFT LCD doesn't make it better than a conventional LCD.

A 384x234 resolution TFT LCD is inferior for our purposes, to a 800x480 conventional LCD. The conventional LCD will be lighter and higher resolution.

I have been using an 800x480 conventional LCD for about 6 months. I have banged it around quite a bit and had zero problems. It works great and has picture flip (vertical and/or horizontal), and rotate features. Even if it didn't, it wouldn't matter, as it could simply be mounted upside down. I operate it via either a battery pack which I keep in a camera bag slung over one shoulder, or I plug it into an AC source.

I've mounted it on an israeli arm sort of thing, on a shoe mount, and on some other mounts. I like it on the shoe mount the best, as it makes camera movement more intuitive.

Bill, which one do you have? (monitor) And what kind of israeli arm/hot shoe mount? Thx! :)

Is there some sort of adapter or battery that can be used with the cheaper car monitors to allow them to be battery powered?

Yes where is this magical 800x480 lcd with flip functions?

i got the LM733W 7" on my steady and shoulder frame.
It is very bad quality (384x240) but it is bright and you can flip AND mirror.
it is very cheap. nice for framing the subject, but hardly usable for anything else.
(i think i paid it less than 280$)
I got a professional SONY , high resolution, with many feature , but it is 4/3 and the cost... (over 1500$)
I got a liliput 7" wide with touch screen and it is as good as the professional Sony but very dim (probably due to the touch layer).
unforntunately it is not flipable.
I got several other LCD , all low quality but very cheap. can be helpful when you need to check if the signal is here or not.
frankly the plastic case from most of screen (even the sony is platic) is not a problem.
My opinion/experience is that there is no reason to put a lot of money into a small LCD they are equally unusable for checking quality, color balance, contrast seriously.
The only feature i would like on such monitor is a firewire input, Y/C being useless regarding what you get on the screen anyway, composite is OK.

The ideal screen ?

7" , very bright , 800x600, flip and mirror feature, firewire and composite input, composite output, large voltage input range (from 7.2 to 14.4V)
custom safe margin overlay, 4/3-16/9 selectable

Hello all,

Found a pretty good solution, I'll post how well it work here once I've put it all together.

I ordered this screen:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...RK%3AMEWN%3AIT

for $190. Here's the good parts about it: It's very high resolution (1024x768), it flips easily, does both 4:3 and 16:9 and it has an s-video input.

I then bought a 12v high-capacity battery pack and a charger for it and that came out to a little over $100. Can't remember the exact store where I got it though. So about $300 so far. I then bought a shoe mount for a shotgun microphone which I can dissassemble and keep the base for mounting on the LCD screen so I can mount the screen on top of my camera. That was about $4. I'll post pictures and let you all know the resolution deal once they all come.

Ben you holding out? Robbing banks or something - you got alot of cash - I'm envious!

Well let's just say my dad's a nice guy :) but honestly though, I do what I can to eek out enough cash to carry me through my hobby. Right now I sell a bunch of things I find around my house on ebay, that's my main source of income for now. And the great part is that I can use paypal to directly transfer the funds I get to whatever I want to buy since I shop mostly at B&H and any other shops that are paypal-friendly. My next investments are two 16" carbon fiber rods and a follow focus unit from Dan D. There's about $500...but I'm a kid and I have nimble fingers, so FF isn't high on my list.

I'll guess I'll let you in on my pyramid sch--uh, I mean, smart investment practices :)