Small HD Finally is here

[Tom Daigon]

The DP1 went on sale at 9PM EST from smallHD.com. Soon it will be integrated into
my 5D Glidecam X-10 Stabilizing rig. The the testing of HDMI vs Composite signals
and the evaluation of how best to snake either cable down the center post will ensue.

[Dale Backus]

Originally Posted by Bill Busby

It's no doubt this monitor is amazing (I've yet to purchase one), but advertising having a blue only mode, when... from what I gather, is just a "color temp" setting is very misleading.

Hey Guys,

Been a while since i've had a go here. Thanks to everyone for providing feedback for the monitor, and i'm very glad the general opinion is positive.

We've been extremely busy trying to make good on our promised deadlines, so i apologize for not getting in here sooner.

One thing that just popped out at me reading through this thread, was this here above. I wanted to just inform you guys, that the monitor does have true blue gun. The "color temp" label is probably a bit misleading, but what it is, is full RGB color balance control. You have individual R, G, and B values that adjust from 1 to 100. There are then 6 presets, one called "blue", that you can save any configuration of these values to.

To achieve blue gun, you just go into the color temp menu, select "blue" at the top, and then drop the R and G sliders down to 0, and Blue to about 60. This will only show blue color values, and does exactly what blue gun will do.

Then, for calibration, you can switch over to the picture mode menu, select whichever preset you want to save to, and adjust your contrast, brightness, hue, and saturation.

From what we've seen however, LCDs perform differently from CRTs, in that the colors "shift" a lot less than the "guns" of a cathode-ray, and performing regular blue-gun calibration isn't as necessary. However, this is just our opinion and requires further substantiation.

Hope this clears things up. If anyone has any other questions, feel free to bring them up - i'll stick around.

Thanks!
Dale


Also, btw - we are in the process of developing very in-depth documentation in the form of a wiki. We are shooting tutorial videos and graphical instructions starting tomorrow, and are very adamant about doing it right and often. Sorry it took til now - hopefully we'll make it up by offering very well-rounded documentation.

[Bill Busby]

Thanks for clearing that up, Dale... and sorry if I sounded harsh :) It was only based on what others had said.

[Dale Backus]

Originally Posted by Bill Busby

Thanks for clearing that up, Dale... and sorry if I sounded harsh :) It was only based on what others had said.

Not a problem at all - no apology necessary. Just glad we're on the same page :)

Dale

[Nick Hiltgen]

so is there a coupon code for dvinfo members.. wink wink nudge nudge...

[Trevor Meeks]

Originally Posted by Nick Hiltgen

so is there a coupon code for dvinfo members.. wink wink nudge nudge...

Yeah, I think it's "YOUSHOULDHAVEPREORDERED" lol

[Trevor Meeks]

Not knowing anything about blue gun calibration, I actually went through the calibration process with a guy on my production team yesterday. It took him about a minute to figure out and become comfortable with the controls of the DP1, and we were soon running through the process of blue gun calibration on the monitor. It turned out really nice actually, and although reds/oranges are just slightly less saturated than they should be (as stated earlier) everything else is just about spot on with what I'd expect from a calibrated monitor.

Overall I'd say the process is pretty darn easy, and if you know how to calibrate using the blue gun setting you should have no problem doing it on the DP1.

My ONLY gripe about the process is that the on screen display does not allow you to see all of the color bars at once, so you just have to take that extra step to move the OSD around to see certain parts of the screen when you need to during calibration.

[Dale Backus]

Nick: If it were up to me i would... but then i might not have a job...

Trevor:

Glad to hear your calibration went well - one thing that may help you, is you can drop the opacity of the OSD menu all the way down to the point where you can basically see through it to the bars - its not perfect, and since you were moving the menu around you probably already knew that, but just in case....

[Sean Finnegan]

I've been researching HD field monitors for some time now as I prepare to receive my new SGblade package and so far, I'm happy to say that SmallHD's DP1 is in the lead over Marshall and Ikan's comparable models. Is the ordering end on SmallHD's website still a little backed up? Is pre-ordering the only way to get a discount? And lastly, have I missed the pre-ordering phase?

Sorry to bombard everyone with late questions, but I'm also worried about the battery options. One of the things that I liked about the Ikan monitors is the ability to choose specific battery mounts for power. For instance, I shoot almost solely on a Canon XH-A1, so its nice to be able to order the Canon battery mount with the monitor and use the batteries I already have to power the monitor. Are there any similar options with the DP1 or are we pretty much limited to buying DP1 batteries?

[Dale Backus]

Hi Sean,

Ordering on the website is just freely open now. There is a little notification on the top of the store page that keeps constantly updated notifying you of if you were to place your order right then, your DP1 would ship in X days. No more discounts right now - that was a preorder thing, and to thank the many people who had been following us and waiting patiently for about a year.

As for the batteries - the DP1 is a standard 12v input, which means you can pretty much use any 12vDC source you can lay your hands on, as long as you have the proper barrel plug (which is the very standard 5.5mmOD x 2.1mmID)

We made our battery because we wanted to see some new thinking in terms of field monitor battery form factor. While we fully understand the idea behind having less battery types to worry about and have chargers for etc, the form factor of a camera battery makes absolutely no sense in the monitor realm. Cameras are long, monitors are (nowadays) wide, so affixing a 6 inch long battery on the back of a 1" thick monitor is just wrong, and thats why Ikan is forced to implement nylon straps just to make sure the thing doesn't come flying off when it's jarred.

However, we're not trying to force anyone to adopt a new standard, and we are going to be rolling out alternate battery support, starting with AB D-Tap and RED power support. This will just take a little time, as we want it to make sense, and not be something we just implement, and then have to start defending a subpar implementation.

So no, you're not limited to buying DP1 batteries, but (for now) you are limited to buying 12v batteries, like the Tekkeon, etc. Let me know if you need specific examples.

Thanks
Dale

[Paul Joy]

I got my DP1 today and was very impressed with the presentation of the product and packaging etc, it reminded me of buying a mac or other apple product.

In use though I've run into a few small issues, firstly I have a dead pixel in the screen which although not a huge issue in use is a bit disappointing. I'm having a problem getting a good quality image out of my ex1 via the component output, I can only describe the image as being noisy and nowhere near as nice looking as the cameras lcd. I'll take some photo's tomorrow but the image on the DP1 isn't really what I was expecting from a HD monitor. This may be down to the EX1 though, so I'd be interested to see if any other EX1 owners are seeing the same thing.

As an example if I point my camera at a piece of wooden furniture the cameras lcd shows the browns graduating in the wood as they should, the DP1 however is just showing a mass of noise across the whole gradient area as if the the gain was cranked right up on the camera.

The final thing that's a bit of an issue is that the two power adapters are US style plugs with no provision for use in the UK, I'll have t try and source some adapters which i'm sure are available.

I did have an issue where the DP1 wasn't showing all of the image that the cameras LCD was, but I've now solved this using the overscan feature of the DP1. With my setup I've set the display mode to 16:9 and then set the overscan as follows...

Hstart 402
Hsize 698
Vstart 453
Vsize 560

The monitor then shows the same image content as the on camera LCD, at least on my camera.

Id be very interested to hear from other EX1 users to see if the component output is also generating a low quality image / gradients compared to the LCD.

regards

Paul.

[Dale Backus]

Hi Paul,

Funny, i just got finished responding to your email and then this post popped up in my alerts. Thanks for your compliments!

To address your issues - we apologize for your dead pixel. To be perfectly honest its the first we've seen and altogether have been very impressed with the quality of these LCDs. We'll talk more offline about that though.

Something that is easily overlooked is that we've heard a few people tell us that the image seems "noisy" and not as nice as the cameras LCD. The reason is, is that the resolution you're seeing on the DP1 is probably at least 3 times the resolution of your on-camera LCD. If you're using an EX1, which i believe you are i THINK (its described as 1920x480, so who really knows....) it's 640x480 somehow or in that range. So what this does is it hides so much of the detail and it generally looks "better", but when you're shooting video, ESPECIALLY HD, you really don't want to hide anything.

A lot of the time the camera will be producing noise because of low light or something and you'll have no idea until you pull the footage up on an HD display because the on-camera LCD hides it.

My recommendation would be to try your setup again but in a well-lit area so you know your camera isn't producing any noise or gain trying to brighten up the image and then see what you think.

Hope this helps, and apologies for that bad pixel :(

Dale

[Garrett Low]

Hi Dale,

First I'd like to say thanks for a great HD monitor. Life is much easier with a screen of usable size. I've also found it is a great way to allow a client to preview what has been captured.

I was wondering if you could elaborate a little on the timing and procedure to update the firmware for those of us who preordered.

Thanks,
Garrett

[Trevor Meeks]

Originally Posted by Dale Backus

Something that is easily overlooked is that we've heard a few people tell us that the image seems "noisy" and not as nice as the cameras LCD. The reason is, is that the resolution you're seeing on the DP1 is probably at least 3 times the resolution of your on-camera LCD. If you're using an EX1, which i believe you are i THINK (its described as 1920x480, so who really knows....) it's 640x480 somehow or in that range. So what this does is it hides so much of the detail and it generally looks "better", but when you're shooting video, ESPECIALLY HD, you really don't want to hide anything.

A lot of the time the camera will be producing noise because of low light or something and you'll have no idea until you pull the footage up on an HD display because the on-camera LCD hides it.

My recommendation would be to try your setup again but in a well-lit area so you know your camera isn't producing any noise or gain trying to brighten up the image and then see what you think.

Dale is SPOT ON in this response. The DP1 has an incredible amount of resolution, and thus detail, compared to the EX1's screen. I too was surprised at first to see "so much noise" in my living room for example, which is somewhat dim even in the afternoon. It shows a bit of noise at 0db and a notable amount at around 6db, which really surprised me at first since I couldn't even see the noise on the EX1's screen. However, upon reviewing it on the computer, it was spot on with what the DP1 was showing.

In bright daylight or a well lit set, the DP1 is as clear as a bell, as is the footage from my EX1.

It will take some getting used to, having that much detail, but I assure you - what you're seeing on the DP1's screen (detail wise) is far greater than what you're seeing on your tiny EX1 screen.

Enjoy!

[Paul Joy]

Originally Posted by Dale Backus

Something that is easily overlooked is that we've heard a few people tell us that the image seems "noisy" and not as nice as the cameras LCD. The reason is, is that the resolution you're seeing on the DP1 is probably at least 3 times the resolution of your on-camera LCD.
Dale

I'm not sure that's it Dale to be honest, what I'm seeing isn't just natural noise from the camera, I'm used to seeing that with my footage once blown up in post. I'm also testing with -3db so camera noise is pretty minimal.

Please have a look at a photo I've just taken which shows the DP1's image alongside my EX1's LCD in my lounge. Yes it's a low light image but you can clearly see that the DP1 is showing a lot of weird colour noise.

http://www.videotrader.co.uk/images/dp1noise.jpg

Under certain conditions I'm also seeing green speckled areas in graduated colours which moves across the DP1 as the exposure changes so it appears to be at certain colour levels.

I look forward to your thoughts

regards

Paul.