Monitors and "Ultra" 4k TVs - two many circles in my head

Doing a pretty stout remodel on the new house and one of the things getting built in is a huge (much bigger than it needs to be) 4k TV. And of course anything worth doing is worth doing 5x more than it should be done.....

So HDR is hitting TV land and all the marketing hype contrast ratios.......

Has anyone played w/ any of the higher end Sony/Samsung 4ks to see the number of stops they can display - I am thinking of taking in a scale to my local best buy and loading up some images and see how many steps.

Anyone do this yet???

Also I thought I read a new set that will be 4,4,4 bit depth vs. 4,4,2 current high.


Thoughts and considerations???

Mike

Mike - I don't know anything about television technology, except I really want to see a photo of your installation when it is done!

The comedy is that we have a "short" list of mods we want to make to the house we bought in June - as one step became two that became 3, we got all the way to 40% of the price of the house - even though we got a good deal, it wasn't that good of a deal. :). The TV is not one of the mods (I stopped camera stuff for a while) so it isn't subject to the resale budget compromise.

Got confirmation that Sony higher ends are 10 bit (4,4,2) and the recent model has some sort of tone mapping to HDR the shadows.... I guess.

At one point in time SONY built the best TV's in the world. I became a loyal follower. Then I bought a 55" five years ago. About the third year it started having a bad picture when it was turned on. It would warm up after ten or fifteen minutes it would be work itself out. It was getting worse and I decided to check in to it. I found that it was a common problem with that model. So bad that Sony had actually extended the warranty several years. Of course I found this out six months to late to have the TV exchanged out under warranty. It was a high end model at the time I bought it.

I have been looking for another TV, and will probably buy one after the first of the year. I suggest you read the reviews closely. There are several models that SONY has right now that have multiple complaints about Light Leaks. One model is priced in the mid range and has awful reviews from buyers, for a TV that cost several thousand is ridiculous.

So maybe you will buy yours soon and lets us know what you decide. It might save me some leg work.:)

The wife bought a Samsung 55" 4K TV about a month ago. It's been a good TV so far. I think we paid a little less than $900 for it.

Dave

You will need to let us know how this works out and the results of the testing. I am kind of toying with the idea of getting one to use as a monitor for tethered shooting in the studio if I can find one that is suitable. Not something that makes it into too many reviews for some reason....

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Originally Posted by jrw

You will need to let us know how this works out and the results of the testing. I am kind of toying with the idea of getting one to use as a monitor for tethered shooting in the studio if I can find one that is suitable. Not something that makes it into too many reviews for some reason....

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I bought a HDMI cable to attach to my 55" Sony, plugged in the 7D II with the microphone I just bought and made a video of our Christmas. The grandkids had a blast watching themselves on TV. The Picture was great.

For the purpose of tethered shooting I wonder if there would be a benefit from a 4K monitor. The 7D II will not shot 4K, I would think that if you were in live wouldn't see a resolution beyond that. Or would you?

Tethered for stills not video using Capture 1. Allows far better image review during a shoot than the tiny screen on the back. Easier to check focus, look for dust on objects, and review composition as well on a larger screen. A large display makes it easier for me to find, and correct, the little details that aren't even seen in small screens. Creating a monitor profile is required for proper colour reproduction which is why I am curious as to the colour gamut and tonal scale reproducible on current crop of 4k TVs. Less expensive alternative to big graphics quality monitors with potential for other usage as a bonus item, at least when available content catches up to the resolution factor. Maximum resolution for second display is determined by OS and software in use for this application not the video specs.

Update: In short not much.

Chased around and around in circles. I took a flash drive to my local best buy with several pics and loaded them up on the Sony, Samsung, LG (OLED) and Sharp.

I could see the difference between the UHD and SUHD series Samsung and $ for $ the Sony had visibly better color rendition and capacity (could actually see the difference between 8 and 10 bit color) the SUHD and the Sony were very similar but was a bit more expensive. OLED was certainly nifty but not sure if that was the presets vs. fully calibrated. The Sharp was adequate - couldn't really get to the color adjs, just preset "vivid" what ever that is.

None of the images were ugly, but better was better.

What I don't have a comparison with a full on graphics monitor - then again I doubt I am going to really go there regardless.

I am thinking of TOL sharp, just because it has the widest color gamut and the intrinsic contrast is flatter than the others which seems over cooked. As well as least expensive so if it is this doesn't work not too much gone. The other leading option is the Sony TOLs (top of line).

Thoughts?

Mike

So I bit the bullet and bought the computer side of the effort. More RAM than you can count, a several T on the drive and a .5T SSD and a 980ti graphics card (won't have to visit this decision for a while was my thinking). Will set up the RAM drive like JRW mentioned awhile back.

So back to the display side. Chasing around the 4k monitors. Does anyone have experience w/ a 10bit and mapped 14 bit look up table vs. gulp even more $$ for a 14 bit display? There seems to be a couple of steps in function and price. Several in the $600 range, next step is $1000 ish, next step is..... not going there.

Viewsonic has one that is 10 bit w/ look up, others are simply 10 bit. thoughts/concerns?????

Thanks,

Mike

I have very little to contribute, but this is one of those threads I am watching with great interest. Look forward to hearing what you figure out.

A monitor with lookup? Is that if you aren't using it on a computer, and can't apply an ICC profile at the graphics driver level, so you're transforming the color on the monitor itself? At first that seems weird, but I guess if you connect the monitor to your camera directly then that's your only option for color calibration.

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Originally Posted by DavidEccleston

A monitor with lookup? Is that if you aren't using it on a computer, and can't apply an ICC profile at the graphics driver level, so you're transforming the color on the monitor itself? At first that seems weird, but I guess if you connect the monitor to your camera directly then that's your only option for color calibration.

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Well that is what is in the product description, distracting advertising copy? Perhaps when running a video/streaming somthing??? I have to admit, this one of the parts of imaging I know very little about (as if I know anything about any part of imaging).

While I have done some uber big pano's w/ the idea of doing a wall sized high res print, I haven't yet done so - mostly because I haven't figured out a good way to cost effectively change the wall size prints (advent of modern life - wanting to be constantly over stimulated?). My point to this is that it is far more likely that all my images are going to be seen by some computer screen or HD TV somewhere and 10bit RGB 4k is pretty much the top of things for images flinging about the internet for the next 2 or 3 weeks (and the masses for a much longer time).

I have heard/read look up tables the past (don't recall precisely how they were used, etc) I think this is a bit of my one simple anxiety of not doing anything any less intelligent than I already have (which actually would be pretty hard to do as I have done some really lesser things).

I am wanting to dial up the enjoy images more than acquire gear to acquire more images that I don't see very often. Kayaker and I chatted about traveling to take more images vs. acquiring gear - this is along the same lines.

Thanks for reading the ramble any help on this is appreciated.

Specific language below

"This Brand X monitor delivers stunning definition for color-critical applications and is designed for Content Developers, Graphics Professionals & Post Production. With 3840x2160 resolution, and SuperClear IPS technology for wide-angle viewing, this 10-bit monitor can display up to 1.07 billion colors, while a 14-bit 3D look-up table and pre-calibrated Delta E≤2 provides a color palette of up to 4.39 trillion colors. It also features split screen capabilities for up to four screens."

Ok... So I've read up on what a 3D LUT will give you... it's more for color grading and transformation than calibration, and I fail to see how this isn't something any modern GPU can do in it's sleep, like a small compute shader run over the image before outputting it. So, again, perhaps it's meant for a feed coming straight from a fancy Cine camera, and in this case you've preloaded some moody "post-effect" onto the monitor so you can see a decent preview of how the color and lighting will look, before you go through the whole post-processing step and figure out you need to reshoot the scene (note, that's expensive!). Perhaps if that's your life, this feature is useful, and money saving. For a typical photographer, it's near useless.

Apparently Photoshop has supported 30-bit (10-bit x 3 channels) in Windows since 2012, however it's new to OS X (since El Capitan), and Photoshop added support as recently as December. It's support depends on the machine, obviously, and the only example they give is that the 5K iMac supports it.

IPS is good. A cheap $100-$200 monitors are based on something called "TN", or twisted nematic. They're good for office use, gaming, etc, but not art, photography, etc. The colors are typically poor, and change depending on viewing angle. On my old cheap Dell monitors some colors would shift considerably at low angles, and at extreme vertical angles the colors would actually invert. On my iMac's IPS display, at extreme angles, the brightness dims, but the colors remain true. You can test your monitor here, with nothing more than your browser and your eyes. The link should take you directly to the viewing angle test. View the image from above, below, left and right. Scroll down to the different colors, and see how they all respond... some colors may be affected less than others.

So, in summary, you want IPS. I'm not sure you need 10-bit per channel. A wider gamut may be good too, but be warned people viewing your images may not see something as nice as you do.

This guide seems to cover all this: http://www.144hzmonitors.com/photo-e...-january-2016/ ... the one they recommend for 4K... perhaps the one you were looking at, as it has the 14-bit 3D LUT, is the 32" NEC Multisync PA322UHD.

Thanks David, this is alot of help. The one in question is the viewsonic - I will check out the NEC.

Performance update - Awesome.

While that start up from a cold start is much faster (thanks to the SSD drive) the real tell of the tape is the stitching of the mega pano. You might recall I did a 200+ frame pano of the east side of Logan's pass (take w/ a 5dSr). Well on my month old i7 laptop 12 g ram, 4g dedicated to the graphics card, it took 10 ish minutes to load the images, and a casual cup off coffee to align, and then a leisurely lunch to render the 65k x 30k (1.96 gigapixel) image. Well the new box did these tasks in the following time frames - a little under a minute to load all the images (229 of them), and just about 30 seconds to align and then perhaps a full minute to render.

So I am pretty happy with the oomph that this system has. I have yet to optimize the RAM drive(probably won't at this point), etc, etc. this is pretty much straight out of the box.

With gigapixel results a few a minute or two away vs. hours, I a getting stoked to go do some more of this type of work. I am still working on the real graphics monitor. The only draw back now is that it makes the uber images of a 5DsR and one of the uber sharp tele's more available from a through put perspective may trigger a relapse of GAS. No new cool thing is ever the end - it is always a new beginning :)

NEC does carry a hefty price premium for the improvement over other products. For those who are more budget conscious but still want a great display I think that ASUS PA327Q(4k sRGB) or PA279Q(WQHD AdobeRGB) are good options to consider for a fraction of the cost. Would suggest the PA279Q to have the gamut range for editing and softproofing before making prints. many printers can go beyond the sRGB colour space now.

Kind of curious about some specs on your new beast of a computer.

I-7 6700 @ 4 ghz, 64 g DDR4, 980ti 6gb graphics card, SSD 256g for software, and a T2 mechanical w/ 6 gbit transfer rate.

I found a reference to PA329Q that was a step up from the 328 connection wise - announced but not released yet.

That does sound like a monster for crunching through big panos. One possible item to watch for that did catch me by surprise once was the size of temp files getting big enough to prevent saving the files onto a drive that has less than 200GB free space on it. Couldn't clean out the temp files as they were in use and couldn't save the work due to lack of disk space. I installed an extra SSD that I had for use as a scratch disk and it solved issues from the temp files. Not something that too many people are going to find out about until they work with really big files.

Great catch, I will check the temp file sizes. I can see a larger SSD (or additional one) could be the next step up in performance. I plan to be setting up a mirrored set of hard drives in a couple of months.

So it has almost been 2 months since you started this thread. Dare I ask what you have narrowed it down to? I fear that you are crossing the line that separates looking into it from anguishing over the details. Does the patient require a prescription of rum based beverages to help ease the pain?

One other thought that did occur to me today was that maybe the Wacom Cintiq 27QHD Touch just might be pretty much everything you are looking for in a display, and then some. Using the Intuos Pro for a while now has most definitely changed my editing experience. Combining the pen and touch into a display just might be the next step. Just not sure how much time you spend using brushes in editing so not sure if it would be of interest to you. Quick summary of specs: 10 bits, 2560x1440, 97% Adobe RGB, Pro Pen. Not too scarily priced compared to some other monitors $1800 on amazon.

Getting there - NEC and ASUS just announced new monitors in the $1,500 USD range.

Good to hear that you haven't fallen down the rabbit hole and wound up circling around in spec land. Have trained family members to spot the signs so they know when to cuff me in order bring me back.

Almost made a decision :) Actually have been so busy, haven't had time to fiddle w/ the new set up.

It strikes me that the mid/higher end Sony, LG, and Samsung 4k TVs are 10 bit 4k displays. I am not going to be flipping back and forth between color spaces - RGB to CMYK, etc - ding ding ding - why not pick of the JS8500 55" 4k which is selling for US $1,500 - and when I am not doing photo it is a pretty decent 4k TV???

what am I missing?

I get that I would have to find the most neutral TV color adjustment and then do a color calibration.

Thoughts?

The initial TV setting might be worth experimenting with a bit. Some of the monitors I have used since I started calibrating have had preset options to choose from. I learned from playing with multiple calibrations on one, it was a real crappy day outside and I was getting restless, that it pays to check them all as it was an otherwise overly saturated setting that yielded the widest gamut coverage.

So a combination of this thread and seeing a reference (near the bottom) that emphasized monitors sent me on a goose chase last night as I had some time to kill. Plus, when I did David's test (here), a few issues popped up on my monitor. Probably not bad for an affordable monitor from 2011 :)

A few websites I found that were interesting:

http://thedigitalcamera.net/best-mon...d-photography/
http://www.144hzmonitors.com/photo-e...de-march-2016/ (already referenced by David but still interesting)
http://thetechplanet.net/best-monito...photo-editing/
http://pc4u.org/best-monitor-for-pho...d-photography/

At least that helped give me some perspective as to what is out there and I should be looking at.

Not saying the idea of a TV isn't a good one. Wouldn't work for me as I edit photos in my office and there isn't room.

Thanks, for the insight - oddly the price on the Samsung JS8500 jumped $500 - they must have made a mistake or got rid of their surplus. then again the new Sony looks interesting :)

So, I bought the Samsung JS8500 55" 4k TV - it is a 10 bit display and arrived today at 3 pm. $1,400 USD - worst case scenario is that it becomes our new TV vs. the dying vizio 2k from 6 years ago. I don't need to see 2 color spaces, etc, etc that a "real graphics monitor" can provide.

It is right 6' from my nose, and fills my eyeglasses except the outer 10% on each side.

Have dialed down the contrast, saturation still I know there will be a real calibration effort in my near future.

I have to say the big screen, high res, extremely reduced, perhaps eliminated banding so far has been a blast.

What this does do is up the ante on the screen for the living room. I don't do prints and hang them on the wall (though I still pondering a big pano for a wall...). It (the big screen in the living room) will be the primary way I enjoy my pics, and now that I have seen them this large/resolved/colored, etc.....

I think this pretty much closes off this thread.

Thanks to all for your help.

Ok not quote finished. There a lot of shots I passed over looking at then in small form that are now really interesting in large form.

Yep TV for the living room is going to be big.

Have been able to spend a couple of days w/ the new TV/Monitor. Still dialing in the color balance etc. But I did notice an interesting change in the appearance when I switched from sRGB to Adobe RGB or "up"

The image gained contrast and color saturation.

Have no idea the real mechanics behind it, but the wider color gamut was clearly more pleasing to my eyeballs.

As I mentioned earlier (and shared a beer w/ Sean) the bigger real estate makes many photos that I passed over as "too busy" suddenly seem more interesting and many of them (Utah and AZ landscapes) have a depth that wasn't there before.

Happy clicks

Mike

Mike

Oh boy, you don't want to know this update.

As mentioned I bought a Samsung JS8500 55" and use it basically as my giant work and photo editing monitor. It can display 10bits vs 8 bits so that means I can move from sRGB to almost full Adobe RGB 16.7 vs. 1.07 billion colors.

Well.... we were planning to remodel the living room kitchen and part of that was a new big screen in the living room.
Well.... Since B&H had a great deal on the OLED from LG.....

Well.... Anyone interested in a 9 month old Samsung?

The samsung does great things, OLED is really a step up, the blacks are intrinsically better, shading .vs just not turned on, etc.

I would suggest that the OLED is step smaller is a better result than a IPS a step larger. The off axis viewing is a huge winner w/ OLED and the truer contrast seems just a step up.

You might as well try the full set of TV technologies... go check out a Quantum Dot display, and let us all know how it compares to the OLED?

The Samsung has quantum dot. On Axis, really good. OLED is better. Off axis QD gets washed out OLED doesnt.

Thanks Mike.