4k monitors

[Barry Beckham]

Is there anyone on the forum who uses a 4k monitor, maybe a BenQ or an Eizo?

I’m interested in some personal experiences with these monitors if possible

[Lin Evans]

Hi Barry,

I use a 4K Samsung. I have no experience with the BenQ but considered the Eizo and then quickly dismissed that idea as being way too expensive for the minimal increase in quality. Yes, you get a better view from angles and you have the ability to use color space beyond sRGB but how important really is that?  If I were still doing lots of professional printing where I absolutely HAD to know that what I sent out for reproduction would be rendered precisely as seen on my display, it "might" be worth while, but for the purposes of beautiful slideshows and 95% accuracy, my 28" 4K Samsung which cost me about $300 with taxes here in the USA has been quite sufficient. It renders beautiful images, has great refresh rate making it easy on my eyes to spend hours viewing and other than the fact that I still use Win 8.1 and Photoshop CS6 Extended which  makes for tiny menus, I've been perfectly happy. Win 10 or one of the subscription versions of Photoshop is a remedy for the problem I have but I'm not willing to go to subscription software and have no desire for Win 10 so put up with the Adobe issue. No other software at all is a problem.

Best regards,

Lin

[goddi]

Barry,

I have a 27" 4k Dell P2715Q. Love it. I don't create any 4k projects but I like the real estate of the screen at 3840 x 2160. Lots of space and sharp. Tilt, rotate and up/down helps, too.

Got one for my wife, too!

Gary

[Barry Beckham]

Thanks. The Eizo’s are a bit pricy and I like the idea of a monitor with built in calibration. The BenQ SW271 does that, but it’s fairly expensive over here in Australia, about $1900

[Ron67]

Barry,

I've been using the Dell 43" 4K since it came out.  I know it might not be the equal of Eizo, but I like it.  My wife particularly likes the fact that I only have one monitor on my desk.  It did take a little while for me to get used to it simply due to the size.

Ron

[jmG-06100]

Hi barry!

I have chosen a BenQ SW320 monitor (4K) and have been very happy with the high quality of this wide gamut product (one year of use).  It comes with its vizor to protect from stray light from the sides and the top.  The size of 32" (81 cm) is fantastic for editing photos and also to allow multiple pages on one screen.  Calibration can be performed with the X-rite sensors and also, as in my case, with DataColor products such as the Spyder sensors.
The red triangle in the charts below represents my RGB space, for my own screen, after the calibration process.  Any colour within the triangle is accurately displayed on the monitor.  Note that the scale of the chart gives more emphasis to the green area than is actually visually noticeable (a question of scale).
As you can see, 95% of the basic sRGB space ("small RGB") is well covered with a slight loss along the purple line (from Red to Blue) but with much more green space.
The Adobe RGB triangle (in purple) is only slightly bigger than the actual displayed space (in red).
The price level makes it very attractive compared to the higher end products (Eizo, e.g.) and the potential slight difference in quality is of no object for my personal use.  That's what I learned from several technical reviews in my camera magazines.
Please note that BenQ have two product lines, one (SW) for photographers (mine) and one (PV) more oriented towards video use and specific cinema calibration needs.

I take this opportunity to stress the need to have a regularly calibrated monitor when editing photos, so that colours are properly displayed, as well as the black to white gradation (nuances of grey).  Failure to do so makes one "blind" with no control on the result when the images are shared with others, displayed on an other monitor or TV, shown on a screen via a projector or printed on paper.  Editing in the widest possible colour space (Prophoto RGB for instance) is highly recommended, with at least 16 bits per colour channel.  But that is another topic altogether.

 

 

[Barry Beckham]

Thank you, the BenQ was the one that attracted my attention, but it will be in a small room and I settled on a 27in.

However, it may be a while till I am able to move my PC to the room it will live in, so I’ll give the 32in more thought.

I’ve had an Xrite ColorMunki for some time and my confidence in it is zero. All it does is screw up the colours of any screen I try it on. It was a used product when I bought it and I’m assuming its Just past it’s sell by date and needs binning.

I like the idea of built in calibration

[jmG-06100]

My first wide gamut monitor was from "LaCie" with its own calibration sensor "blue eye pro" (in fact an X-rite model, rebranded) and I was told (by a specialist in colour management) that its useful lifetime was less than three years.  So, yes, you need to use a recent calibration unit and renew it every two years or so (unless the technology has changed drastically).

[Barry Beckham]

I’ll probably do what I’ve always done. Used the screen out of the box, works for me 

[jmG-06100]

Straight out of the box, the BenQ is already close to optimum calibration, so why not?

I had a bad experience in the past with a Samsung monitor, very bright and with strong colours (for gamers, I suppose), so that I dimmed all my photos and decreased the saturation until the image looked natural on my screen ; Sent for print to get a thick book of many pages, all images were very dull and almost colourless, and that's when I started to learn about screen calibration.  You should not have such a problem with modern monitors intended for photographers.

[Barry Beckham]

jmG

I’ve been looking again at the BenQ SW321C monitor, which is 32in and 3840*2160 pixels. I’m sure it would be superb for image editing and viewing presentations, but I have just been wondering how it all works if I want to do a screen capture using Camtasia at 1920*1080. I can’t capture 3840*2160 and assume you just reduce the resolution in setttings and capture the 1920*1080 screen as normal.

I expect few people here would have experience of this, so I’m just thinking aloud for a moment and welcome any thoughts you all have. Of course I could hang onto one of my 1920*1080 monitors just for that screen capture  process, but I’m not a great fan of having two monitors on my desk. 

[Lin Evans]

This is just a thought Barry. First my own experience. When I installed my new video card (nVidia 1660 ti) I began using the nVidia Shadow Play which records beautifully 4K video 60 fps and all animations as smooth as butter. When I put my own tutorials up, I drop this 4K capture into PTE and output HD at 1080p for the actual tutorial. Could you do this and use the HD output from PTE for the Camtasia editor to add the bells and whistles you use in your tutorials?  Not having Camtasia, I have no idea how it works.

Best regards,

Lin 

[Barry Beckham]

That’s an idea I hadn’t considered. I suppose it depends if Camtasia would record anything above 1920*1080 as well as I get now. I guess I wouldn’t know unless I did a test.