Dual 19 inch Widescreen Monitors with DualView
I have always wanted to run dual monitors at home because of the efficiency I believe it gives me when I work on my computer. Two monitors allow me to have a larger work area to work with and I do not need to switch between applications that are hiding behind each other. With two monitors I am able to place documents side by side. In my case I put Notepad++ in one monitor and I have Firefox running in the other monitor so I can see how my work is progressing a little quicker.
I was able to convince my employer to purchase a second monitor for me at work saying that I would increase my productivity and efficiency because it would be easier for me to display more of my work. At work I have two Samsung 740N’s (17” LCDs) which give me a combined resolution of 2560×1024. The nice thing about this is I can have two full pages side by side, one in each monitor.
Now at home I have had a Samsung 941BW (19” widescreen LCD) which I have grown quite attached to and at the time I never had the money for a second one, until now.
I was looking at eBay one day to see if I could find an identical Samsung so that I could run dual monitors at home. Unfortunately on eBay people are selling them for the price of $200 to $300 and I was not willing to pay that much for a monitor that came out during Christmas of 2006. So where could I look that might possibly have the monitor that I need to have dual monitors? Craigslist!
A quick check through vancouver.craigslist.org and I find a couple of Samsung 941BW monitors but they seem to be bundled with computer systems. No one would split the monitor away from their computers but I did manage to find someone selling a Samsung 940BW.
Are these monitors different? According to Samsung they are identical in every aspect. They have the same resolutions, same connections, same refresh etc. I could not find a difference. It could be one is an American version and the other is a Canadian version, or that the 941BW was a manufacturing upgrade from the 940BW. So far I cannot see why they differ.
After I picked up the monitor last night and got it home to set it up I couldn’t get the second monitor working with my eVGA 7600 GT video card the way I wanted it to. I want a dual monitor setup that allows me to independently change the resolutions of the monitor. I want 1440×900 for each monitor, but the nVidia drivers I had at the time would only let me run the two monitors as a single entity which gave me a monster 2880×900 resolution (as shown above)!
A quick download from nVidia’s support site (and talking to Stephen) I loaded the newest ForceWare driver and that allowed me to set the resolution of both monitors, but with a catch.
It seems that even though the two monitors are set for 1440×900 they are not displaying it properly. When I move the mouse to the edge of either monitor it scrolls horizontally for a little bit. So the 1440×900 resolution that used to work for on monitor is not correctly working for two monitors. I posted a thread on the nVidia Support Forums and was told to try and ‘Auto Adjust’ the two displays and that should fix it. I could of sworn I tried that before I went to be last night and because I am running both monitors via the DVI cables it said it could not ‘Auto Adjust’ the screens.
I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens. If anyone out there might have an idea why the native 1440×900 will not display correctly on my dual monitors I am willing to give anything a shot.
Now I do know the pictures are not the best since I have to work with not-so-good lighting so if anyone has any tips on how to get nicer looking photos of my setup I am willing to try. I was using a Canon EOS 350D while trying to defuse the on-board flash.
8 Comments
Sep 28, 2007 @ 11:18:10
I’m going to assume you do not have an external flash to put on the hotshoe. If you did, and it was one of the decent models, you could swivel it up to bounce off the ceiling.
What you could do instead is put the camera on a tripod, or figure out some other way of having it completely stable, and then take a picture with the flash off. The tripod is necessary as you will then be using a slow shutter speed that might show camera shake if you are hand holding it.
On the other hand, if the room is quite bright, perhaps the flash is unnecessary and you can just turn it off. Have you tried that?
You need to be cautious when working without the flash as to what the camera meter is seeing as the main subject. If your centered on your LCDs, and they are much brighter than the rest of the room, you might need to overexpose the picture a bit. That is why the fancy flashes are the best solution, short of even fancier off camera lighting.
Sep 28, 2007 @ 11:56:28
The camera does have hotshoe but like you said.. a bounce flash would be good. That would be my next purchase for the camera.
The shots were taken with a tripod. The first two shots were without the flash. I had to do some post work to up the light levels and correct the color a bit. I guess I could of used a slower shutter speed. Perhaps I’ll play around later today with taking more pictures.
Thanks for the tips!
Sep 28, 2007 @ 13:31:05
Another option you can try is using the flash exposure composition. I have my internal flash composition set to -1.0EV if not lower. This will reduce the amount of light sent by the flash. This allows the monitors to shine through.
Sep 28, 2007 @ 13:59:12
I forgot about the exposure settings of the flash! I’ll try that too and see what I can do.
Sep 28, 2007 @ 15:36:45
Knowing that the first two were taking on a tripod and without a flash, my next recommendations would be to use a white index card at a 45 degree angle in front of the flash to bounce it all up to the ceiling, but I’m not sure how well that will work with the little built in flash.
You could also try turning the monitors’ brightness down so they aren’t as bright in a longer exposure.
Finally, you could look at doing an HDR photo; which consists of taking several exposures and combining them afterward using software. I’m just experimenting with it myself as I just bought a 400D myself.
Sep 28, 2007 @ 16:22:29
An HDR image would be interesting to see. Since I can do bracketed exposures. I’ll try it this weekend and if the results are ok, I’ll post them.
Apr 11, 2008 @ 02:24:59
Hey, just stumbled upon your blog…
I live in the Vancouver area too, and I also have a 940BW+941BW setup…
I’ve noticed that the colours are ever-so-slightly different; do you have this too? The white on the 941 is a little whiter than the 940..I checked through the settings thoroughly and they’re identical.
If you did notice this, perhaps you want to try trading monitors? Just throwing it out there, if interested please email me.
Cheers,
Ian
Apr 11, 2008 @ 06:42:52
Ian I haven’t noticed if they are ever-so-slightly different, but when I go back home on money I’ll take a look and get back to you.