What size? Is it for post production or field work?

For field work, you usually see an 8" monitor, though you certainly could bring a 13/14" out there with you.

Anyway, I have a Sony PVM 14m2u (that's a 13" monitor) that I use for both field and post work. It's very nice (16:9, blue gun, good color reproduction), and can be had used for not too much off ebay (I would say between 4-500 bucks is the most you should pay, though I've seen 'em go for way less).

On the small side (the 8" monitors), many seem to like the PVM 8044q. Though it's small, it still has 500 lines of resolution, 16:9, all the goodies. These seem to go in the same price range as above

There's the less-awesome PVM 8041q, which is only 250 lines of res, and only has 16:9 in underscan mode (and it seems not all the 8041q's have 16:9 at all, according to the pics on ebay), and probably has other limitations I'm not familliar with. These seem to go around $300 on the 'bay.

For critical focus you need one with 500 lines. If you shoot wider and mainly with the stock lens you can get away with a cheaper monitor but if you shoot with the lens long or a mini35 you will need the better monitor.



ash =o)

Thanks a bunch guys. Living in europe, i'm shooting pal; i take it that this info would pertain to this camera also.........or not?

Absolutely, in fact your Pal camera has 20% more resolution than NTSC, so being out of focus will show up ever so slightly more.

JVC make some very affordable "hi res" (note, not hi def) monitors, rated at 750+ lines of horizontal resolution, with all the bells and whistles (blue check, 16:9, underscan etc)... the basic Sony models cost the same amount with lower resolution and fewer features.

Size doesn't actually matter much - the 15", 17", 19" models all have the same features and resolution. Of course it's nice to have a bigger monitor if you're in a studio, but for portability you wouldn't want to go any bigger than 15".

Not sure where you are, but here in NZ I just picked up one of the 15" JVCs for equivalent to about 500 Euros, but admittedly that was grey market so it may be around 600 Euros with JVC warrenty. I also have a Sony 14" with lower specs (500 lines, no underscan) which actually cost more.

Stick with a CRT model. Although they are bulky, you just can't trust the colours on an LCD (unless you're willing to pay through the roof for a high end job, ie: something that will cost as much as your XL2).

Two things you should check before you buy: lines of resolution (>500 as Ash said), and underscan (so you can check the full frame - the XL2 viewfinder doesn't show 100% of what's being recorded to tape).

Thanks Josh. This is helpful. these monitors are not as common in france or germany ebay. i live in france but electronics are traditionaly a bit cheaper in germany than here. i'll keep looking on ebay for a bit longer before giving in to buying a new one.

Great. One more note, if you're looking at cheaper options, be sure that the monitor has s-video inputs (or BNC) so you can connect it easily to your camera at a higher quality than composite (any decent monitor will do).

And make sure it's rated as 500+ lines of res. Underscan is useful but not essential, so you can live without it if you're on a tight budget.

Happy hunting

laptop as a field monitor
 

I was thinking if one can use a laptop with firewire for monitoring the image, it should be sufficient for focus as it is pretty highres.
Besides, what app would one use in order to get a full screen realtime firewire monitoring?

Vedran,

I'm using a Dell notebook with PPro to monitor the image and to capture the footage. It's fine as long as you have access to external power. If the laptop runs on battery power, the screen gets pretty dark (to save power) and it is quite difficult to see anything on a sunny day.

For some reason I still don't understand the capture window of PPro doesn't show the image in real time but about 1/2 to 1 second later than the action. Not a big deal but sometimes it is distracting. Also you don't get a full screen monitoring in the PPro capture window. There are always several menue items (like record and stop buttons and so on) on the screen.

In short: it's possible to use a laptop for monitoring but a proper external monitor is much better for that purpose. On the other hand you can capture your footage to a hard disk and have the back-up on tape all at the same time.

You should also consider DVRack. I use the software and find it very useful in my event work.

http://www.seriousmagic.com/dvrack.cfm

SN

I use DVRack also. It has a waveform monitor, vectorscope, audio analyser, screencapture feature and a nice field monitor which you can make full screen to help you focus. You see a bit more noise on full screen, but that's the laptop display. DVRack is very useful for me, especially for green screen work.

I was that impressed, I bought their Visual Communicator and Ultra 2 software as well :-)

Allan

Is there a similar program for the mac. I dual boot my macbook pro so I could run dvrack. I'm just wondering because then I could keep all my video work on the mac side of my computer.

Well, Final Cut Pro has the live waveform and vectorscope in the "Log and Capture" window. You should be able to use the firewire out on your camera, and set the capture options to non-controllable device and use the built in scopes.

I've never tried this myself, but it should work...

That's true I never thought of trying that. I'll give it a shot and post if it works or not.

Well I tried it under final cut pro and it does work as a monitor and you can monitor all the scopes and such however you cannot record the video in final cut pro be cause it requires the camera to be in VTR mode in order to capture the stream from the camera.

what if you set it to non-controllable device? Will it not record what the camera "sees"?