> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
> [mailto:owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Elmar Pinkhardt
> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 2:11 AM
> To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
> Subject: AW: filmscanners: Puzzled about display resolution
>
>
> So what I have read in this thread is, that most of you try to get the
> highest possible resolution with a monitor and an acceptable refresh rate
> (by the way I think 75 Hz is NOT acceptable, as most screens are optimized
> to 85 Hz).
What does it mean to optimize a screen to a refresh rate? What is acceptable
is whether you can't notice flicker and can sit in the front of the monitor
for hours without getting a headache. It's the bottom line that counts, not
specs. What is bothersome varies from person to person. For me, 75 Hz is
enough. But it's a combination of refresh rate and sharpness that prevents
fatigue. If I ran my monitor at 85 Hz with the same resolution, I would wear
out over the course of the day, because the monitor isn't as sharp AT MY
CHOSEN RESOLUTION at 85 Hz.
> But what do you win out of having a 17' with 1600*1200 or a 21'
> with 2xxx*?.
> In my opinion you "win" a worse image quality and far more problems with
> your eyes after hours of work.
> Most manufacturers suggest 1280*24 even with their 21'. And that
> are not the
> cheap ones but Eizo or Sony or Iiyama.
Hitachi and Cornerstone recommend 1856x1392 for their top end 21" monitors.
Those monitors are *designed* for those resolutions.
> You will give away a lot of the (expensively paid) image quality
> of your 21'
> with resolutions as high as possible.
That's usually true. But for example the highest possible resolutions of the
Hitachi and Cornerstone top end monitors is 2048x1536. In order to get a top
quality image at 1856x1392 these monitors have to be designed to display an
even higher resolution image. It *works* at those higher resolutions, but by
then lines begin to get fuzzy and viewer fatique is going to be the price.
But at 1856x1392, everything is razor sharp and contrast is high. And since
those monitors will run at 75 Hz at those resolutions without sacrificing
sharpness, you can work with them 12 hours a day without getting fatigued at
those resolutions.
> I would never go with 1600*1200.
Never say never. Don't be a Luddite. Here is a quote from an email I sent
out to someone privately yesterday that I mean to be public for this list
discussing these issues:
It is always best to run your monitor at the highest resolution you can
before the letters start getting blurry due to limited bandwidth of the
video card or monitor itself (not due to failure of your eyesight!). Then
set your fonts in the Control Panel/Display/Advanced/General to 125%. If
that's still too small, use the Other... selection in the dropdown to
customize the font size. The reason you want to do this is so that the
pixels are as small as possible. This makes more pixels available for
creating the fonts of the point size you need (as measured on the screen) to
read comfortably, and then the characters are better rounded and easier on
the eyes. It also makes bitmaps appear smoother since the pixel size will be
smaller. Finally, there is less scrolling around to examine full-sized
images. These are fundamental issues that for some reason are not widely
appreciated, but should be easily understood by members of the filmscanner
list since we're all up on resolution, etc. But remember my caveat: don't
push your monitor to the point where lines start looking fuzzy, because then
you're exceeding the capability of your hardware.
Frank Paris
marshalt@spiritone.com
