Throughout the course of my career as a cinematographer, I’ve seen a lot of high-end LCD screens, some better than others. While reviewing the Panasonic AG-HPX500 camera for the last issue of DV (Sept. 07, page TK), I had a chance to work with two of Panasonic’s newest LCD monitors, the BT-LH80W and BT-LH2600W.

The 26” LH2600W comes loaded with pretty much every feature you could want, including four input options, HD/SD SDI, component video, Y/C (S-Video) and composite video. With a resolution of 1366x768, the LH2600W monitor operates in 480, 576, 720, 1035 and 1080 formats.

Performance-wise, the first thing I look at with LCD monitors is their viewing angles. How far off of dead center can I look at the monitor without a loss in image brightness and quality?

While Panasonic lists an impressive 176-degree viewing angle for the LH2600W—and that spec is definitely true—there is considerable loss in image brightness past 120 degrees. For normal viewing, in my opinion, anything up to a 50 percent loss in brightness is acceptable, in which case Panasonic is very close within a 176-degree viewing angle. For critical work, however, I would consider anything more than 10 percent loss to be substantial—in which case the LH2600W still has a 50-degree viewing angle both horizontal and vertical (about 25 degrees left/right and up/down).

The monitor has a blue-only function for color calibration, along with built-in waveform and a Pixel-to-Pixel function that shows the image at 100 percent size. This is an excellent feature if you’re using the monitor for critical image judgment or as an on-set monitor for focus judgment.

Click To Enlarge Utilizing the BT-LH80W indoors, it has a bright, sharp image and fantastic color reproduction, as long as you’re viewing it dead-on (or within 20 degrees).

I was a little frustrated that contrast and backlight knobs are one in the same (differentiated through a menu option). Although I would rarely adjust the backlight, it’s far too easy to have this knob set on backlight and believe that you’re adjusting contrast. The knobs are press-to-activate, which reduces your chances of accidental adjustments. You press the buttons once to change the setting and again to save the settings. An amber LED lights up to let you know that your particular setting is now different from the factory setting. This is somewhat helpful, but in most cases these amber LEDs will always be on. I’d love to be able to set this LED default to instead alert me if changes are made from my settings, not factory—much like a “!” warning in camera viewfinders.

The monitor’s five user-assignable function buttons give you easy access to the blue-only, waveform, Pixel-to-Pixel, underscan and several other options. I really like the built-in waveform option, but I wish that I had the ability to put it full-screen, or at least larger than just a box in the corner—and I wish that it had a delineated scale on it instead of just lines at every 10 IREs. It’s understandable to forgo these features on a smaller LCD, but on this 26” big boy, it’s a bit frustrating not to have those options. At least I can tell the system where to position the waveform (bottom or top left or right corners) to keep it out of the way of important screen information.

Calibrating the monitor to SMPTE color bars generated from an HD camera hooked through HD-SDI, I found that I was able to set chroma and phase dead-on. I like that the adjustment knobs have positive “clicks” for each step in their adjustment and a numerical scale to note my settings.

There is an excellent selection of screen markers available, although they are not customizable. In 16:9 mode you have 80%, 88%, 90%, 93% and 95% markers for your “safe zones,” in addition to “Vista” (1.85:1) and “CNSCO,” which took me a minute to realize meant “CinemaScope” or 2.40:1. There are also markers for 14:9, 13:9 and, of course, 4:3. Testing the markings with my Target Multi-Format Frame Chart, I found them to be absolutely accurate. You can set the area outside the marker to normal image, 1/2 brightness or black, which is really nice. The center mark is a rather large cross hair, with no flexibility, either on or off.

Color temperature settings are very impressive. There are three presets: 56K, 65K or 93K, in addition to three variable settings, with an incredible amount of flexibility over red, green and blue gain and bias.

The LH2600W has three different gamma settings: “Standard,” “Film” and “Studio/Post.” Film gamma selection is further subdivided into “VariCam” and “Other.” “Standard” and “Studio/Post” appeared nearly identical to my eye with “Film,” surprisingly, appearing a lot brighter, contrastier and more saturated. Reading the gray chip on SMPTE color bars (generated through an HD camera via HD-SDI) in “Studio/Post” and “Standard” I read 880 footlamberts (fl), while in “Film” mode I read 1300 fl—a 140 percent increase in image brightness.

The menu adjustments take a little getting used to. The down selection is on the left and the up selection is on the right; for some reason, I felt like I wanted them to be the other way around. When you select a category in a menu, the “enter” button gets you into the options for that selection. You then must hit “enter” again to set the new selection—if you don’t, the setting is rejected. Several times I fumbled through hitting “menu” after I made a selection only to have the monitor resort to the previous option. Some options aren’t circuitous: when you get to the bottom option on the list, you can’t simply hit the down button to return to the top option. It’s a little inconvenient, but not horrible.

I’m not a guy who trusts LCD monitors for critical color work, as they simply never live up to the precision available in CRT monitors. That said, the LH2600W is very impressive in its color reproduction and image sharpness.

Comparing the monitor to my JVC TM-H1750C CRT monitor with standard-definition NTSC footage connected through S-Video (Y/C), the Panasonic seemed to represent more green than red in the image. Working with the user white point, I was able to dial it in to match the CRT pretty closely. Adjusting the green gain in the color temp, I could get the monitor to match very nearly what my CRT was representing. Although I wouldn’t turn to this LCD for color correction, I would have no problem with this as a field monitor for any number of HD cameras to make critical judgments while shooting.

The monitor offers five user save settings so that it can recall, on power up, the color, marker and function settings for five different users or situations. It also supports both NTSC and PAL formats.

Lastly, you have the option to turn off the monitor’s internal cooling fan, which is moderately loud in close quarters, with a loss of about 28 percent screen brightness.

Next up is the BT-LH80W 7.9” 800x450 pixel WVGA LCD monitor, the LH2600W’s little brother. The monitor itself weighs in at 3 1/4 lb. without battery, 5 lb. with an Anton Bauer battery and 4 1/4 lb. with an Anton Bauer AC adapter attached. This is a little heavy for an on-board camera monitor, but not impossible to deal with. The base of the monitor, of course, features two screw sockets for attaching to hardware such as an Israeli arm.

Looking at viewing angles, the LH80W unfortunately is not nearly as impressive as its 26” sibling, but more in line with traditional LCD monitors. Keeping in line with less-than-10-percent image loss for critical work, this monitor has a viewing angle of about 20 degrees. Anything beyond 40 degrees in any direction and it becomes rather ineffective.

As far as features, the LH80W has nearly all of the features of the LH2600W, and then some. Although it only has two traditional input options (SDI and component), the third input is very interesting: “VF,” for viewfinder. With select Panasonic cameras, you can connect a cable to the viewfinder port and use the monitor instead of the camera’s normal viewfinder. I tried such a setup with Panasonic’s AG-HPX500 P2 HD—the downside to it is that the image is still black-and-white and small, one of my few complaints about that camera. I’m not sure why anyone would choose this option, when you can get a beautiful, crisp color image from the camera in component or SDI output. The only thing I would miss when using this monitor as a viewfinder (through SDI or component) is the Focus Assist function on the HPX500, which is fantastic.

The LH80W has a blue-only function for color calibration and built-in waveform, as well as peaking and red focus identification modes. For a camera assistant, this is a fantastic monitor to help with focus. The image is large enough, and clear enough, to discern detail—and with the help of peaking, focus is a snap. I have never been a fan of color focus assist systems as they seem to get in the way, offering more false positives than any real help. It’s nice that this monitor has a resolution control on the red focus assist, giving 30 steps of intensity, but I still found it less useful than standard peaking, which has the same amount of control over the intensity. The monitor also features a Pixel-to-Pixel function that shows the image 100 percent, cropped of course. For more critical focus work, this is an excellent feature.

Like the LH2600W’s backlight and contrast knob, two of the LH80W’s knobs do double-duty. Again, unfortunately, contrast and backlight share a single knob, as do peaking and phase control. This is somewhat forgivable in a smaller monitor, but I’d rather have my backlight controls be menu-driven only and take up a little more real estate for a separate peaking adjustment, especially for an on-board monitor that’s going to be moving around with the camera. As I would want to constantly re-calibrate it to a given environment, I’d use the four adjustments independently, having to go through the menus to re-assign each knob every time I wanted to use it.

The LH80W has three user-assignable function buttons which give you easy access to the blue-only, waveform, or several other options. Once again, I really like the built-in waveform option, but here I especially wish that I had the option to put it full screen. On a small field monitor such as this, the small corner waveform is only of marginal usefulness.

Calibrating the monitor to SMPTE color bars from the HPX500 connected via component input, I found that I was able to set chroma and phase fairly precisely. I found the positive click steps in the adjustment knobs to be slightly too much. Adjusting my PLUGE on the color bars, I really would have preferred a setting between 24 and 25 points of brightness for the given environment in which I was calibrating the monitor.

The LH80W has the same selection of screen markers available as the larger monitor, and the same center mark, which is even larger on this small screen. Color temperature settings, surprisingly, are just as impressive as the LH2600W with all the same controls.

The monitor offers four user save settings so that it can recall, on power up, the color, marker and function settings for four different users or situations. It uses a surprisingly low amount of power, easily getting four to five hours from an Anton Bauer Dionic battery.

Utilizing the BT-LH80W indoors, it has a bright, sharp image and fantastic color reproduction, as long as you’re viewing it dead-on (or within 20 degrees). Outdoors, it’s no match for natural sunlight, even with the backlight pushed to the max.