The EIZO ColorEdge CE210W LCD display also features a full set of on-board manual controls to adjust color in six separate dimensions, as well as 3-Mode contrast fine-tuning. The display also includes a patented brightness stabilization function, essential for consistent color reproduction, that involves a drift correction sensor that rapidly brings the display brightness to the optimum targeted level of function after start up or power saving shut-down recovery. The height and screen angle adjustment of the EIZO CE210W is supported by a specially-designed ArcSwing stand that offers a wide range of adjustments.

The EIZO ColorEdge CE210W LCD display provides the best support I have experienced using scanner drivers to preview and pre-adjust the values in a scan prior to making the final scan. The finished scan files require little if any further editing adjustment to reproduce quality output.

Setting Up And Using The Display
Setting up and adjusting the EIZO CE210W LCD display for digital photography was both the easiest and most rewarding experience I have had with an LCD display in almost three years of evaluating many different makes and models. However, I did take a detour from the setup method that is easiest by first treating the display like a typical consumer model and manually adjusting its performance, and then calibrating and profiling it conventionally with third-party software. This yielded a disappointing level of performance. In addition, I found two minor weaknesses in the product via this initial detour setup: that the manual control buttons on the front of the display are hyper-sensitive and difficult to use, and that although the height/screen angle adjustment affords a wide range of adjustment, making changes to the angle and height is rather awkward. Fortunately for most users adjusting height and screen angle is not an everyday thing, and if the EIZO ColorNavigator CE software is used, which I strongly recommend, with the display connected to the host computer by means of a USB cable, adjusting, calibrating, and profiling is simple and direct, easily accomplished to a very fine degree in just a few minutes. In fact, using the EIZO software and a supported sensor to measure and calibrate, besides being simple and efficient, produces the most effective management of color performance I have experienced and supports a very high level of on-screen photo image reproduction quality. In addition, with the EIZO calibrated and profiled directly through its own hardware you get a superior level of performance control and eliminate the burden of color management functioning from the computer system's video card, so superior performance should be expected even with systems that do not have special high-performance professional graphic video cards.

Photo image-editing adjustment is efficiently and precisely supported by the EIZO ColorEdge CE210W LCD display and its wide HD format, providing room to display both a full and generous reproduction of the photo image and ample room for application control dialog windows.

Once I had made my adjustments to brightness, gamma, and color temperature using EIZO's ColorNavigator CE software and completed the process calibrating and generating a display profile, the resulting display image performance encouraged me to embark on a large volume of digital darkroom work. After a short initial period of visual adaptation to the brighter, more intense color and contrast of the EIZO CE210W display, I was able to produce adjusted and edited files from scans and raw digital camera files, edited and refined in Photoshop, that produced prints that matched my on-screen images. After making finished files from a wide diversity of film scans and digital camera files, and also retouching numerous portraits as well as doing some creative Photoshop editing, I found I could work as effectively to produce predictable output using the EIZO CE210W display as I could expect with the CRTs I have depended on for the last few years.

However, the settings I plugged in to adjust the EIZO display when using the ColorNavigator CE application were near identical to what I had been using with my CRTs, save for a slightly lower native black point with the LCD and the selection of a brightness white point of 100 cd/m2, 10 points brighter than my CRT setting. This was with my digital darkroom ambient illumination level the same as I was used to working with CRT displays. So, I doubled the room brightness and then reset the display brightness to 120 cd/m2 and calibrated and profiled the display for these new settings. After doing just a modest number of new film scans and editing them to finished status ready for output, I made a set of prints. I was very encouraged by the print results, being just as close a print match to the screen image as when the display brightness was 20 points lower. It was good to know that one could take advantage of the higher brightness potential of an LCD and also obtain effective color managed print matching and enjoy working in a brighter, more comfortable room illumination environment.

The EIZO ColorEdge CE210W LCD display and its precise control and accurate calibration and profile performance provides exceptional color management performance and reproduces highly predictable print output matched to the image displayed on screen.

Evaluation And Recommendation
Although the price of the EIZO ColorEdge CE210W is considerably more affordable than previous ColorEdge CG series models relative to display size, at an MSRP of $1199, it is about 25 percent higher than the same size current consumer LCD display model. Regardless, that is a small price premium for the fine level of color accuracy and color management performance this new EIZO delivers. Regardless of the task, whether adjusting a scan preview, or adjusting values in a raw digital camera application, or tweaking an image in Photoshop and doing fine portrait retouching, the EIZO is more effective than the best CRTs we have had in the past. It is both accurate and consistent, a no compromise solution for doing digital photography. It is well worth the price for anyone who wants reliable, consistent optimum on-screen performance.

For more information visit the EIZO website at: www.eizo.com and select Graphics Monitors. You may also contact EIZO Nanao Technologies Inc. at 5710 Warland Dr., Cypress, CA 90630; (562) 431-5011.

For a full list of specifications, visit the Instant Links section of our website at www.shutterbug.com/currentissuelinks/