What camera or
monitor should you get? The answer is
always the same. Look at what you are
doing first. Then ask someone
knowledgeable to help you. Give them an
idea of your budget. Why waste time
looking at what you cannot afford or at
less costly sub-optimal solutions if you
can afford better? If you tell me your
child wants to take lots of snapshot
pictures and you want the camera to do
all the work, I will steer you away from
the more professional grade cameras and
point you at an inexpensive camera that
might withstand rougher use. If you
tell me you have $100 and want a very
high end camera or monitor, I will tell
you that you either need to reset your
budget, save up, or spend your money
elsewhere.
More pixels on a
camera are not always better. These
days many cameras have 5 megapixels or
more that they can use to capture your
image. However, camera principles still
apply. If the lens is dirty or just
does not focus well (inexpensive), then
the image will not look good. If you do
not have enough light, your picture will
look dark. If the camera tries to
compensate by raising the ISO setting,
the picture may be less dark, but more
grainy. As always in the computer
business, the weakest link determines
the result. If you are shooting
pictures for a web site, usually
anything over 640x480 dots will not be
usable. Large images take a long time
to upload, download, and manipulate. If
you take high resolution pictures, you
will want to lower the resolution for
many output devices or the web.
Matching the resolution to the intended
output device is usually a better idea,
but if you do not know what the output
device will be, take higher resolution
pictures. You can always throw some
pixels away, but you cannot create more
after you have taken the shot. For
example, you can crop and blow up a
section of a high resolution photograph
and it can still look good. Blow up a
low resolution image and it will look
grainy. However, when you crop, blow
up, or otherwise edit a photograph, the
software has to make some decisions as
to what something should look like. If
you have 4 pixels you want to combine
into one for posting on the web, and
three are red and one is blue, can the
software choose the correct shade? If
you can take the pictures with the
appropriate lighting and resolution,
they will look a lot better than any
edits you try to make to them later.
Monitors have very
poor resolutions when compared to
cameras or printers. My 1680x1050 22
inch monitor has a total of less than 2
million pixels to play with. That is
less than most cameras. A 600 dot per
inch (dpi) printer is 44 times as sharp
as my 90 dpi monitor! Almost all
monitors have less than a 100 dpi
image. And, without a special monitor
and calibration software, you cannot
tell if the colors you are seeing on the
screen will match your printed output.
If you are working with an image, you
want to think about the display
device. If people are going to view it
on a monitor, you do not need many
pixels for a good looking image.
However, printed material will require
much higher resolution images to look
good.
These days, you
probably want to buy the biggest monitor
your desktop can accommodate. More
screen real estate means more pixels to
create an image. Remember, though, that
the image is likely to be just as grainy
with a larger monitor as with a smaller
one because the image will be spread out
over more screen real estate. To get
the best image, always tune a flat panel
LCD monitor at its maximum resolution.
Tips:
-Run monitors at
their maximum resolution to get the
clearest picture.
-Check the dots per
inch (dpi) at the maximum resolution.
Higher dpi monitors will look less
grainy.
-Digital video
connections produce steadier images.
-If you will be
changing monitor resolutions frequently,
be sure your monitor can handle the
resolutions and display them well.
Although all LCD monitors look less
crisp when viewed at less than their
maximum resolution, monitors with more
capable scaling electronics will show
better pictures at lower resolutions.
This is most important with monitors
that you use with both your computer and
TV.
-Make sure your video
card supports the same resolution that
your monitor does.
-Higher dpi monitors
are not necessarily better monitors. As
you raise the dpi and keep the monitor
size the same, typewritten characters,
graphics, and other features shrink and
become harder to see. They can also
look dim compared to a lower dpi
monitor. This is one reason why you
might not want to buy the high
resolution version of a laptop screen.
You might not be able to read it well.
-LCD monitors take
less power and desk space than tube
monitors.
-Numerous studies
show large, high resolution monitors and
more than one monitor increase
productivity markedly.
-ALWAYS ask a
professional, like one of the guys at
Iron Horse, when looking for a camera,
monitor, printer, or scanner for the
best fit for your needs.
-Seeing is
believing. If you have the chance,
always take a look at a monitor before
buying it. Specifications and consumer
reviews can be deceiving. What looks
good to someone else may not look good
to you.
-Look for brighter
monitors for high light environments.
-Large, glossy
monitors may look great until you bring
them home and see the glare they give
off. Anti-reflective treatments will
help you see your monitor better, but
may fuzz out the picture, distort
colors, or narrow your effective viewing
angle.
-Anti-reflective
coatings can be damaged by glass
cleaners. Clean your monitors with dry
or damp cloths or sponges or specially
formulated cleaners for cleaning
monitors.
-Video cables often
have "chokes" on them. These are
magnets that go around the cable to keep
outside signals from interfering with
your video transmission. While they
help, it is not a good idea to run video
and power cables next to one another.
The electromagnetic radiation emitted
from the power cables can interfere with
your video signal, most often resulting
in ghosting on your screen. If you have
problems with ghosts, color shifts, or
color dropouts, check your connections
and make sure your power and video
cables are not running parallel to one
another. I just fixed a signaling
problem with my own monitor by taking
parallel power and video cables and
moving the video cable so it was at
right angles to the power cable.
-Save lots of money
and space with keyboard/video/mouse (KVM)
switches if you have multiple computers
you want to control.
All
you really need to remember is this:
Call Iron Horse. We have been doing
this for a long time and can help make
sure you see what you want to see!