Hi Steve and other mentors!
Long time lurker(also at LGG), first time posting.
I'm a newbie DP who just started my graduate program. As with the monitors around us, the consistency between different monitors can be a bit of a problem.
I understand that the viewing environment on-set can almost never be ideal and sometimes we don't even have a proper video village where things are properly shaded. meanwhile, it's quite common that we don't have a dedicated operator and a DIT so I have to look at an onboard monitor and be the DIT myself (which is also a valuable learning opportunity)
So here comes the problem: since most of our projects are in rec709, an on-board monitor @ 100nit, even with some level of shading, can be hard to see. That's where I got confused since a lot of the monitor companies are advertising their brightness to be "viewable under the sun" but doesn't that defy the purpose of accurate monitoring, since rec709's peak brightness is 100nit?
I understand that eyes adjust to the surrounding environment but what should we do to achieve some level of accuracy if viewing at a higher brightness?
EVF is always properly shaded, yes. But is any of the EVFs in the current market even capable of user calibration? There's very limited control as for Alexa's evf (since that's the camera we use the most)
I would definitely spend some of my own money to make sure the color management on-set gets as good as it can be. But third-party EVFs are rare and the only one I see that offers some level of manual adjustments is Zacuto's gratical line. Just imagining putting a probe on that can be very funny. Their GUI also seems to occupy part of the screen that will undoubtedly affect the reading.
What is a cost-effective way to achieve proper onboard monitoring/viewing while operating? I would sell my kidney to get an FSI, colorspace and a probe. but that is just too cumbersome to put it on a camera
