[This is personal experience from amateur, so direct instead of list
reply]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (2004-03-28 at 1438.12 -0500):
Is there a monitor at a reasonable cost, a few hundreds of
dollars, that allows for adjustment of gamma? Bearing in
Doubt so, but you can get the adjustment via relatively supported
videocard (I tried Matrox and ATI with Xfree86 drivers) and tools to
tweak the LUT, look up table (xgamma, ie). Speaking about monitors,
you can get CRTs with good quality for that price. They should let you
select colour temperatures and come with their own profile.
Check the pro range of known brands, probably the 19 and 21 inches
sizes only. Three years ago 17 inches was pro too, now that size is
crowded by TFTs (*1). Then download all the manuals you can find to inspect
what they do. Matching will not be perfect, but you will be safer than
with a go figure how it behaves monitor.
For the past six or seven years I used Hitachi, CM641ET and CM643ET,
both 17 inches (both same specs, they just changed the name, I think),
nice quality. But they are leaving that market and going for TFTs
now. So some months ago I got a Philips 109P40 for a bit more than 300
euros.
It comes with 9300K, 6500K, 5500K and sRGB presets, allows mid-high
resolutions at high refreshes (using 1280*960 at 100Hz at this
moment), and the target market is CAD and DTP. It even has an extra
input, just in case you need to plug two computers or you have a
workstation that uses BNC instead of the typical 15 pin D-Sub. I
wanted it a bit for colour quality, and a lot for the flicker free
with reasonable resolution, my usage is non pro, but is impossible to
get a monitor in which flicker free is not tied to nice tube and lots
of controls.
I also checked Hitachi, but they are going out of the CRT field as I
said, NEC (fine), Mitsubishi (fine), Sony (expensive), Eizo (also
expensive), Iiyama (fine), LaCie (they rebrand others, and add some
things). Most of them are basicaly *tron tubes (Trinitron, Diamontron,
Whatevertron or just this monitor uses aperture grille tube). The
two lines that cross the screen are weird the first days, or when you
try to concentrate in that area of screen. The *tron mask was also a
bit strange for me, cos I was used to the Hitachi tubes, which
provided really sharp images with their own technology.
If you can go to the shops and see the monitors working, that would be
the best. I did that for the Hitachis, and I was really happy with
them. With the Philips it was a different story, now shops go for
flashy TFTs so I was unable to check a real model in shops around
here, and had to buy by phone a bit blindly.
Good luck shopping. :]
*1: Personally I only like them for pure text processing due the lack
of flicker and reduced weight, but hate them for weird 1280*1024
resolution some have, lack of high resolutions (funny to find
1600*1200 or 1400*1050 in laptops but rarely in desktop TFTs, LaCie
has one but expensive) and the varying colour response. I still have
to find someone that can prove the gamut is above CRTs, last I read
was that a medical targeted monitor with a price over a thousand was
approaching 90% of NTSC range, if my memory does not fail. The mag
company I know go with CRTs, and I agree with the friend I have there:
not yet, maybe in the future, if colour is more important than space,
buy CRTs.
GSR
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