David--excellent info. Thank you. Especially the part about matte boxes--thank you for the lesson.
Always welcome. As a side note, I don't mean to sound like a pedantic jerk. Been ill the last couple of days and that's perhaps affected my delivery somewhat.
Are
these calibrated monitors? I can get 7' screen on eBay for 1/3 of ikan's price. Is it a quality or features make them pricey?
Are you sure that you mean "calibrated?" Perhaps I am borrowing too much from my IT experience, but monitor calibration is a process that involves tuning the monitor output under a given set of lighting conditions using reference from whatever scanner and printer are also connected so that all three work in harmony to create a "what you see is what you get" design environment. Let's say you calibrated your monitor at home, under fluorescent light. When you take it outside under daylight it will look different.
I guess high end displays for production have undergone some sort of calibration at the factory. At the same time, any decent monitor is going to give you a few controls that you can adjust during some testing so that what is displayed on your monitor is a more accurate representation of exposure, color, etc.
I've used 7" no-name monitors, 7" Ikan monitors, and 7-8" Marshall monitors. Given the budget I would go with the Marshalls. The no-name ones are just ugly, imho.
The no-name monitors are not going to give you accurate color rendition or be sharp enough to accurately judge focus. Of course, since you are only viewing an SD out on the t2i the quality of monitor becomes less of an issue as you are not going to be able to trust that output for anything except framing. It won't be exposure, color, or focus accurate on the SD feed.
I would still recommend popping a little extra for your monitor. As you move along you will eventually buy another camera body, and the accessories you get now should be quality enough to work with your next body. Otherwise you're buying all over again.
