Panny Field Monitors

[John Cummings]

I’ve had an LH80 now for a few weeks and overall, I like it a lot.

I bought it thinking I would use it mostly mounted on the camera, but find it’s just too heavy and bulky to run mounted for all but the most controlled shooting situations. That’s a bummer, and so my search continues for a small, lightweight HD monitor I can run on-board.

I like the red focus function but find I really don’t use it because it’s plenty sharp to check focus. I find the waveform function to be almost unusable. Off-axis viewing isn’t great, and forget about using it outside. But it puts out a good picture and I quickly found I could trust it. I self-installed the HDSDI option card and it wasn’t too hard.

I like that I can stick a small Dionic battery on it and it seems to run forever. For a compact HD monitor that travels well, I’m happy with it.

I haven’t used it’s bigger brother, the 900. I never really considered it because it’s not 16X9 native, and it was a little larger than what I wanted as well as more $$ than I was willing to spend.

J Cummings
DP/Chicago
http://www.cameralogic.tv

[Ernie Santella]

Thanks John for for feedback. Do you have a cover for it? I saw that Portabrace makes one, but it doesn’t look (in their pics) like you can keep the battery on it when its closed?

What are you using?

Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com

[John Cummings]

I haven’t seen the portbrace case. I might check those out.
Right now it lives all snuggly in a pelican case.

J Cummings
DP/Chicago
http://www.cameralogic.tv

[Ernie Santella]

A follow-up…

I bought the Panny LH80 monitor with the optional HD-SDI input card. Love it. I’ve used the more expensive LH900 quite a few times and this is just as good. I haven’t compared them side-by-side, but the resolution is excellent. On a tiny monitor this size, you cannot see the difference in resolution between the two. Plus the LH80 gives you more options, like its native 16:9, ‘Red’ focusing and its lighter.

I also got the Porta-brace cover for it. Very nice. Has both a built-in sun shade and a rain cover. Portabrace really knows how to make covers, it’s brilliant.

If anyone’s considering one, get it, you’ll dig it.

Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com

[Jeff Regan]

I was going to buy an LH80 to go along with my 1700, but was unhappy with the poor off-axis performance. I looked at Boland
and TV Logic monitors. The Boland was great for off-axis, but
didn’t like anything else about it.

The TV Logic 7″ and 8″ monitors are worth looking at. I bought the LVM-071 because, while not great off-axis, it was a bit better than the LH80, but what really sold me was the peaking circuit–fantastic sharpness, great colorimetry, user interface as good or better than LH80, waveform and vector display that is so much better than the coarse 1700, which is waveform only like the LH80. It has a speaker, built-in yoke, very light weight, markers can be any color, pixel-to-pixel mode, built-in V-mount and the price is great. The only thing I don’t like is the reflective screen which can be a pain in uncontrolled environments.