David B. Brooks Blog

1. I’m a bit lazy and often asked what LCD display makes and models I recommend. So here they are, all three of them that are under $1000. They all provide a high color range reproducing over 95% of Adobe RGB (1998) colorspace, so you see all of the color in a dSLR Raw image file reproduced in your application, whether iPhoto or Elements, Aperture or Lightroom, Photoshop CS or Corel Paintshop Pro.

Maybe it’s just me, my peculiar life and perspective, but I was just reminded by an article about jazz in the New York Times(Home Life With Mikes: A Jazz History by Nate Chinen, February 17, 2009) that included a part of W. Eugene Smith’s life defining a connection between music and a photographer. I suspect the connection is enhanced in my mind in part because in high school my ambition was to be in music as a singer, and I participated in several choral groups as well as took voice lessons for a couple of years. After high school four years in the military intervened and provided the opportunity to become interested and get into photography. I was not sorry I got detoured because having a deep voice myself, and baritones became eclipsed in those years by singers like Johnny Rey and his pop song “Cry”. Regardless, even though I embraced photography completely, I still enjoy music, especially jazz.

A Shutterbug reader, Tracy Valleau, e-mailed me suggesting I take a look at the Dell Ultrasharp U2410 LCD display. I did and found it to be one I can recommend for digital photography. I purchased one to test and for my own personal use. This Dell U2410 is a 24 inch widescreen LCD display with 1920x1200 pixel resolution. What makes it suited to digital photography and professional graphics is its wide color gamut of 96% of Adobe RGB and its white luminance is adjustable to 80-90.0 CD/m2 providing a high reproduction screen image quality. Its 12-bit internal processing assures a smooth rendition of tones on-screen that’s in a bezel and stand that is sturdy but light with an excellent design that’s carefully manufactured. In all respects this Dell Ultrasharp U2410 is much more affordable at a list price of $599 while entirely competitive with more expensive brands favored for a color managed digital photography workflow.

There are some things worth repeating. For serious digital photographers who edit their images with a computer until recently you could only see a little more than 2/3rd’s of the color in the original on-screen image displayed, and if you can’t see it you cannot control and adjust it accurately. What I am talking about is that a dSLR set to record in raw format or a scan of a color transparency produces a range of different colors about what the Adobe RGB (1998) profile will support, but until just a short while ago all but some very special and expensive LCD displays only reproduce sRGB color that is a colorspace that has about 30% fewer colors. In other words most of us have been working with photographs that contained many fewer colors on-screen than the original.