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BUYERS’ GUIDE
3. BENQ SW321C PRO 32IN IPS MONITOR £1599/$1994 benq.com
There’s nothing quite so frustrating as using a small monitor when editing. But there’s nothing small about the 32-inch BenQ SW321C monitor, which offers 4K resolution and critical colour accuracy. Especially when it costs a relatively affordable £1599/$1994 and comes with an effective screen shade and colour calibration thrown in. The 3840x2160 screen has IPS Technology which offers the widest colour gamut. It covers 99% Adobe RGB colour space, 100% Rec. 709 and 95% of DCI-P3/ Display P3. That means the colours are very realistic. Colour reproduction is from a 16-bit LUT. You can also preview the HDR effect with HDR10 and HLG formats, and video format that supports 24p/25p film content. BenQ uses its Uniformity Technology to fine-tune colour and brightness at hundreds of sub-regions, for colour accuracy right across the whole screen. And built-in hardware calibration allows you to adjust the monitor’s internal image processing chip
without changing the graphics card output data. The SW321C supports the video calibration software CalMAN and LightSpace to adjust the display’s 3D LUT and support third-party video calibration software. And each BenQ screen is tested to ensure monitors from different production lines will display colour at the same precise level. It’s a fully professional monitor that will make a big difference to your next film in terms of ease of use and colour accuracy.
5. X-RITE COLORCHECKER VIDEO XL £396/$399 xritephoto.com Getting colours right is not only about post, but also the capture stage, and should be thought of as an essential part of workflow. Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is ideal for colour management, and if you film a colour chart for eachmajor shot, then it can work wonders inmatching footage from different cameras and getting colours right. Resolve has built-in software to work withmost of the major colour chart manufacturers, including X-Rite’s ColorChecker series. Just specify which colour target you have used – like this X-Rite ColorChecker Video XL. Choose the gamma that you selected in-camera, such as Rec. 709 or S-Log, and set the applicable colour temperature. Resolve also offers lots of ways to fine-tune the footage manually, so you can take complete control. And, if you do this, it’s best to use large colour charts. Larger charts have two versions of each colour patch: one saturated and one unsaturated. So, not only are they bigger targets, but they deliver improved control. Using custom controls, along with a colour target, you can fine-tune each individual hue. There is also support for 3DLUT Creator. The ColorChecker Video XL has the same chromatic colours, skin tones and grey reference chips of the standard size ColorChecker Video, but is twice as large. The chart has six saturated and six desaturated colour chips aligned with vectorscope primaries, six skin tone colour chips from light to dark with different undertones, and four larger steps for even grey balance including white, 40IRE grey, deep grey and high gloss black. There is also a linear grayscale in six steps for even grey balance, including highlight and shadow regions, plus black &white chips at two corners to determine even illumination. The ColorChecker Video XL lets you get exposure andwhite-balance right in-camera, then tweak colours in the edit for total accuracy, andmatch-up shots between different cameras and lenses.
4. SAMSUNG 980 NVME SSD 500GB £65/$70 samsung.com
If you can’t stretch to tens of thousands for the latest Apple Mac Pro computer, then a far more affordable solution is an SSD drive for inside your laptop. Samsung’s new 980 NVMe SSD comes in 256GB for £46/$50, 500GB for £65/$70 and 1TB versions at £120/$130. It’s the company’s first consumer-level drive without DRAM, making very fast NVMe speeds available to all at a great price. Coupled with the company’s latest sixth-generation V-NAND, as well as optimised controller and firmware, it enables the 980 to provide performance at six times the speed of SATA SSDs. Sequential read and write speeds come in at up to 3500 and 3000MB/s, while random read and write performances are rated as high as 500K IOPS and 480K IOPS. When working with extremely large video files, the new Full Power Mode, added to Samsung’s Magician 6.3 software, allows the drive to continuously run at peak performance for uninterrupted working. An advanced thermal design with a nickel-coated controller and heat spreader means it shouldn’t overheat, either.
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