Yep kiddos you read that right I am a field monitor convert. I have resisted it for as long as I can but now i have joined the field monitor crowd. I will save my rant for after this, I am absolutely blown away by my Feelworld monitor. It is crisp, sharp, color rendering is very accurate and the build quality for the price is excellent. After some playing with it I think I have it pretty much spot on for my camera. Oh and of course, lets not gloss over the fact it has false colors. This is another safety net for making sure you are properly exposing your footage. It is by no means a replacement for a light meter but it is very handy and has helped me make sure I am not clipping any of my highlights a few times.
First off let me preface this post by saying I have always agreed that there are situations where a monitor is a must especially in this digital age where being able to tell whats in focus can be brutal especially on certain cameras that have no diopter. In the world we find ourselves in need to shoot in a log mode and trying to squeeze every stop of range out of a camera (even when using a lut or rec. 709 color space for your monitor) can make it beyond difficult to tell if the footage you are getting is sharp. I don’t know about anybody else but when I am overly preoccupied with trying to tell if everything is in focus I wind up messing something else up or missing something I would have otherwise seen. I am still trying to find my way in this field monitor digital world but i am getting closer. I still feel like when you break out a monitor that more than a few people can see you are inviting way too many cooks in the kitchen. Lets face it when doing a one man band shoot or one with a super small crew this isn’t too much of an issue. The larger the crew and the more client rep’s there are on set the more opinions will be had and this can slow things down to a crawl. By no means do I want this to sound like I am saying I am not open to input there are just times where too much input becomes too much to handle.
