Just like Apple democratized Non-linear editing with the release of Final Cut Pro, Blackmagic brought professional grade color correction to the masses with DaVinci Resolve. It still blows my mind that the lite version is free. This software once cost a quarter of a million dollars, now it’s free, let that sink in. Black Magic has just released the beta for DaVinci Resolve 11 which can be downloaded here.

I too, often color correct with a woman wearing a shag carpet shawl with leather sleeves in my swanky living room.

I like to equate color correction to cooking. I can make a solid pork chop with peppers, but I’m no Gordon Ramsay. A simple color grade is way better than an in camera look in almost every situation. You may not be a top chef, but making your own meal is still miles ahead of a frozen microwave dinner.

Yum… meatloaf…

 One of the easiest ways to improve your cooking is tasting the food as you cook, a stupidly simple idea that has improved my own culinary exploits. Knowing how spices and ingredients work together to change the meal allows you to correct your previous mistakes. Now do you see where I’m going with this? Pork chops to Scientific monitors. Color correction will save production mistakes and vastly improve the aesthetic of the footage. But if the monitor you are using to color correct is not correctly balanced you’re like a Chef who can’t taste salt. The meal taste great to you, but on other’s palettes it’s the dead sea.

Just like all production tools the scientific monitor is as powerful as the individual using it. No one ask a chef what oven they used to cook an amazing meal. I read that in some camera debate forum and will continue to repeat it. It got me thinking though and I bet there are gear heads in the culinary world as well, who do damn well want to know what oven and knife set Ramsay has. I must be hungry. With a majority of the video I produce being for online distribution, I haven’t sprung for a Flanders Scientific monitor, but oh I want one. Seeing the monitor at Cine Gear Expo only grew my lust.

 This picture does the BM230 no justice, but trust me it is sexy in person.

The features in comparison to your consumer monitor are just unreal. The BM230 is the monitor I’ve got my eye on. It’s a 23′ Multi-Format broadcast monitor with 3G/Dual-Link/HD/SD-SDI, Component Composite, and DVI-I inputs. The BM230 features full 12-bit video processing and native 1920×1080 resolution. The 8-bit LCD panel is capable of reproducing over 16.7million colors on-screen. It supports 12-bit, 4:4:4, and XYZ signal formats. The amount of customizable controls is nearly endless. It’s better read about on the Flander’s website. This is professional gear and when used properly yields professional results. Color correcting with a monitor that is not correctly balanced will disappoint clients when the footage that looked great online looks like trash on television. Oh and Flanders is introducing a new 9″ display, the BM090, if you want all that scientific chutzpah in a smaller package. I’ll stick with my Marshall for a field monitor. Time for lunch.