Photog Rob Galbraith Rates MacBook Pro Display "Not Acceptable" 504
An anonymous reader writes "Professional digital photographer and website publisher Rob Galbraith has performed both objective and subjective tests on laptop displays, finding that the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments. The Apple notebook came in dead last for color accuracy, and second to last in viewing angles (besting only the Dell Mini 9). He concludes: 'Macs are no longer at the top of the laptop display heap in our minds.'"
In other words... (Score:4, Informative)
Apple has now offered us a pay-to-play 'option' which fixes the display they broke in the first place (you can get matte as an option on the new 17" Macbook Pro for I think $50 but I'm not sure).
NOT flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
For f' sake, whoever modded this flamebait needs their head read. Read the summary. A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER has done extensive testing and both SUBJECTIVE and OBJECTIVE (quantitative) tests. He use to like Mac notebooks, but the latest crop doesn't suit a pro photographer. What do the fanbois want before they'll consider an opinion they don't like? A goddamn scientific study?
For the last time Flamebait does not simply mean someone's said something that you disagree with or find inconvenient. Grow up people!
Re:NOT flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
This guy is a professional photographer, but that doesn't mean he knows how to use a computer. For all I know he didn't go to System Prefs and calibrate the thing.
idiot.
first of all, rob knows photo AND processing.
second, its not 'system prefs' but always a custom calibrator (colorimeter puck) AND its driver/UI software. its never at the windows 'prefs' level.
Re:NOT flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
Please read the 2nd web page where he showcases the four different calibration devices he uses. You don't just "go to system prefs and calibrate". It's a complicated process.
Rob Galbraith is a very reputable source for nerd-friendly information on photography (unlike many other artsy types that can't tell a bit from a byte).
Re:NOT flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
Rob is not just any pro photographer. He is one of the leading lights in developing comprehensive digital workflows. He absolutely didn't just go to sys prefs. He has tools that are far more precise and comprehensive than that, involving sensors that tack on to the monitor and the like, and he knows how to use them. If Rob says that the increased chromatic pollution from ambient light unacceptably outweighs the improved shadow density in the glossy display, his word on the matter can be trusted.
Re:NOT flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
His conclusion, though, isn't exactly supported by the actual article:
It's important to remember that, even though the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch doesn't keep up in either colour accuracy or viewing angle with laptops from IBM/Lenovo, its display is still quite good and still falls on the right side of the line of acceptable display quality for field use by a working photographer, at least in ambient light that discourages reflections.
The summary picked out the worst of the comments and highlighted them, obviously to cast Apple laptops in a bad light.
Re:In other words... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Am I mistaken... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hello Captain Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
"FWIW, the 17-inch MBP comes with a matte-screen option. Time will tell if such an option trickles back down to the 15"."
A popular apology being offered here and elsewhere but not true. The display option is described by Apple as an "optional antiglare display". It is not matte but a glossy screen with a coating applied and the bezel replaced with the older style aluminum one.
laptops with accurate colors (Score:3, Informative)
If any of you are looking for laptops for serious color accurate work then you might be interested in this article:
http://www.markzware.com/blogs/top-5-laptops-for-displaying-color-gamut/2008/10/14/ [markzware.com]
As someone said before, it's a niche market. Color accurate work is usually done in a S-IPS / S-PVA panel based display which has been professionally calibrated using a hardware colormeter. If money is no concern, check it the top of the line products by Eizo or the HP Dreamcolor series. At the bottom end (but still quite decent) is the HP LP2475w. However, you'll have to add a hardware colormeter to your budget.
Re:Macbook pro 17" (Score:5, Informative)
It's shit no matter what.
But so are all TN panels, which is what almost everyone use, laptop TN panels more so.
Though then again it's not impossible that Apples isn't among the top of the TN ones.
Benq has a 24" MVA-one which isn't that expensive nowadays, and Dell got a couple of 27" ones, it seems impossible to get a decent 20" nowadays, and IPS is hard to find no matter what.
Re:So true... (Score:3, Informative)
The other big determinate in gamut is the center frequencies and Q of the red, green, and blue filters. This allows the W700 to have a wider gamut despite its matte screen. Why not use similar filters for other panels? The W700 has an 8b per-color panel rather than the 6b per-color used in the others. For the same reasons I gave above, more-bits per color allows for better shade gradation. You can't calibration software will fail on a screen when the steps between shades are too large.
Re:NOT flamebait (Score:1, Informative)
"System Prefs" = "System Preferences" in the Apple menu
Apple menu > System Preferences > Displays > Color tab > Calibrate button
That launches the standard calibration app that works with all displays; nothing custom about it. Yes, any changes are ultimately at the (general) driver level.
You are either a moron for thinking that the grandparent is talking about Windows or an anal-retentive douchebag over the details on how to calibrate on a mac.
Re:Macbook pro 17" (Score:5, Informative)
Did you read the second page..?
"In ambient light environments which induce screen reflections, the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch's glossy screen moves deep into the not acceptable category."
That's where the summary and headline come from.
Re:Matte display readily available (Score:3, Informative)
Matte displays were on ALL laptops until a few years ago when someone stupidly decided "Hey! Let's make this look cooler by making the screen look like it had a fresh coat of wax applied to it!"
Re:Where is the "mark for deletion" button? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, circa 1986 I worked as a photographer for a newspaper and we commonly used "photog" to refer to ourselves. What do I do at the paper, "I'm a photog." Who is covering the big game, "You're the photog, now get to the stadium." Why does Joe smell funny, "That is stop bath, he's a photog."
Detractors in this thread are reading way to much into it, this is not an assault on the language.
Re:Macbook pro 17" (Score:4, Informative)
On the order of a couple of pennies per display.
Re:Macbook pro 17" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Galbraith is known being a flamer and ignorant (Score:5, Informative)
The auto-focus on the Canon 1Ds Mk III was, indeed, "useless" for those that needed high speed multliple shots, such as sports photographers. People were up in arms about it and Canon eventually did something about it in firmware.
I can see how your $30 solution will be ideal for photographers out in the field or at a wedding. Photographers love adding to the things they have to carry around with them especially when they could have bought a laptop that didn't need a hood attachment.
You are "splitting" your understanding of who photographers are. A photographer at a sports venue may well send everything but a photographer doing a model shoot will almost certainly do a little bit of image manipulation before showing the images to the client. Model clients like to see the images immediately these days you know and laptops make that possible. In any case are you saying that only the needs of "the big boys" are relevant?
Rob Galbraith is pretty good at what he does.
Nope, CRTs are dead (Score:5, Informative)
Even if one wanted to use a CRT, it is very hard. You basically have to already own one. NEC, Sony, etc all have discontinued their high end CRT lines. To the extent you can buy a CRT anymore, it is a budget display. So the people using CRTs are those that haven't upgraded, not users buying new high end gear.
Also LCDs have progressed to the point they can offer better color than even high end CRTs. The sRGB color gamut, often called "72% NTSC) is specified as it is because it matches the best most CRTs could do. That's why it became the "normal" gamut. It was what most CRTs were capable of. There were a few exceptions, NEC did have a 94% NTSC screen in the early 2000s, but it was over $4000. Not so popular.
Well LCDs are easily exceeding that gamut these days. 92% NTSC LCDs are fairly common, and you can find higher than that.
Now of course in addition to gamut, there's accuracy to worry about. True, typical TN panels are pretty bad. Goes double since all (or at least very nearly all) only have 6-bits per color channel. That means they've got to use some kind of dithering to do some of the finer color transitions. However those are just the cheap panels. There are better technologies out there. IPS, or rather it's later variants like H-IPS, would be what you want. It gives extremely accurate color, and a good viewing angle so color doesn't shift based on angle.
So an LCD can easily do as good or better than even a high end CRT in terms of color. In terms of pretty much everything else, they blow it away. One big problem with CRTs was geometry. It took a lot of fiddling to get the display squared, and it would drift over time. So you ran in to problems of "Is this line that looks curved really straight?" Kind of a bitch for design work. No problems on LCDs. Even cheap ones have perfect geometry that needs no adjustment when you use DVI.
Thus even the design world is LCDs now. They just use better ones. If you are interested, check out NEC's MultiSync 90 series. They are high quality IPS displays used by professionals. I've got one for my computer, though I'm not a graphics pro, because I like the quality of image. Only downside is you have to pay more for them. Quality isn't cheap. However it was the same in the CRT says. $150 might buy you a cheap monitor for office work, but you'd easily spend over $600 for a good pro screen.
Same deal here. Acer will be pleased to sell you a 26" widescreen LCD for about $400. However, it'll be a cheap TN panel that doesn't have particularly good color. NEC wants more like $1100 for their 26" monitor, but it is a top notch image. Planar will actually sell you a monitor with a similar image (uses the same LCD panel, just different supporting hardware) for $800. Not quite as good as the NEC since it doesn't have as advanced hardware backing it up, but much better than the Acer.
As with most things, you get what you pay for. If you've never got a high quality LCD, you've probalby not been willing to pay enough.
Summary is misleading (Score:1, Informative)
Please go RTFA before you just assume the apple panel is bad. Each panel in his review has pros and cons: the main compromise being viewing angle versus color shift.
To the Editors: did you not RTFA?
Re:Macbook pro 17" (Score:5, Informative)
I'm an industry insider as a former laptop repair instructor.
The actual price WE, the repair depot, paid for matte panels was about 5 cents more expensive than the glossy panels.
fuck the summary (Score:2, Informative)
from summary:
the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments
From the article:
It's important to remember that, even though the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch doesn't keep up in either colour accuracy or viewing angle with laptops from IBM/Lenovo, its display is still quite good and still falls on the right side of the line of acceptable display quality for field use by a working photographer, at least in ambient light that discourages reflections.
Of course, you shouldn't use a laptop for serious color work. But it's fine for previewing.
Re:Where is the "mark for deletion" button? (Score:5, Informative)
The word photog is over a century old. These citations are from the Oxford English Dictionary:
So if your definition of "real word" is "word I use," sure, maybe not. But if it's "word that's in the dictionary," or, as I prefer, "word that is/has been used by a reasonably large number of people for a non-trivial length of time," this is a word.
Re:NOT flamebait (Score:2, Informative)
Summary:
"Professional digital photographer and website publisher Rob Galbraith has performed both objective and subjective tests on laptop displays, finding that the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments."
TFA (page 2):
"In ambient light environments which induce screen reflections, the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch's glossy screen moves deep into the not acceptable category."
While the summary may still be considered flamebait, it quotes TFA accurately and does not qualify as being a "baldface lie".
Re:Macbook pro 17" (Score:2, Informative)
re: new MBPs (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone's entitled to their own personal opinion, and I understand people have different needs and wants.
But every time I read a post like yours, I just find myself at a loss.
I owned one of the first aluminum MB Pros (the 2.0Ghz Core Duo model, before they moved to Core 2). It had the matte screen and the "pre chicklet style" backlit keyboard, etc. etc.
I recently sold it and bought a new 2.8Ghz MBP to replace it, and I couldn't be happier with the decision.
The hard drive is finally swappable without tearing the whole machine apart to get to it. The battery life is FAR better than what I had before (and the LED power level indicator on the side is a nice touch too). The video performance is better, and I can put 4GB of RAM in it now, instead of the 2GB limit I had previously. I don't have any real issues with its glossy screen either. Sure, you get some reflections with it, but it's GLASS. That's normal. Especially being a PORTABLE computer, I have no problem picking it up and MOVING it a little bit, if there's some particularly bright and annoying light-source shining directly onto the screen from behind me.
Now granted, I'm not a "pro photographer" or anything ... but I think I'm like most notebook computer users. I do a lot of web surfing on mine, some web design, a little gaming and entertainment stuff (especially if I take it on a trip with me), and keep a collection of photos on it that I have incorporated or may incorporate onto said web sites I work with. I might want to watch an occasional movie on it too. It's been great for all of that.
To hear the people focused on ONE specific need scream that it's no longer a "compelling upgrade", and the whole design team must be "crazy" .... it really does a disservice to everyone else.
Re:So true... (Score:3, Informative)
Somebody clever will start offering a mail-in service for people to get eyeglass-quality anti-glare coatings applied to their Macbooks. It's not going to be cheap as a retrofit, though.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/01/techrestore-offering-matte-conversion-for-15-macbook-pro.ars [arstechnica.com]