Yesterday I received a Dell 3007WFP panel display. The price hurt ($1600 on eBay, $2200 from Dell but sometimes there are coupons) and you need a new video card (and to top it off, 90% of the capable video cards are PCI-e and may mean a new motherboard) but there is quite a jump by moving to this 2560 x 1600 (4.1 megapixel) display if you are a digital photographer. This is a very similar panel to Apple's Cinema, but a fair bit cheaper.

It's great for ordinary windowing and text of course, which is most of what I do, but it's a great deal cheaper just to get multiple displays. In fact, up to now I've been using CRTs since I have a desk designed to hold 21" CRTs and they are cheaper and blacker to boot. You can have two 1600x1200 21" CRTs for probably $400 today and get the same screen real estate as this Dell.

But that really doesn't do for photos. If you are serious about photography, you almost surely have a digital camera with more than 4MP, and probably way more. If it's a cheap-ass camera it may not be sharp if viewed at 1:1 zoom, but if it's a good one, with good lenses, it will be.

If you're also like me you probably never see 99% of your digital photos except on screen, which means you never truly see them. I print a few, mostly my panoramics and finally see all their resolution, but not their vibrance. A monitor shows the photos with backlight, which provides a contrast ratio paper can't deliver.

At 4MP, this monitor is only showing half the resolution of my 8MP 20D photos. And when I move to a 12MP camera it will only be a third, but it's still a dramatic step up from a 2MP display. It's a touch more than twice as good because the widescreen aspect ratio is a little closer to the 3:2 of my photos than the 4:3 of 1600x1200. Of course if you shoot with a 4:3 camera, here you'll be wasting pixels. In both cases, of course, you can crop a little so you are using all the pixels. (In fact, a slideshow mode that zoom/crops to fully use the display would be a handy mode. Most slideshows offer 1:1 and zoom to fit based on no cropping.)

There are many reasons for having lots of pixels aside from printing and cropping. Manipulations are easier and look better. But let's face it, actually seeing those pixels is still the biggest reason for having them. So I came to the conclusion that I just haven't been seeing my photos, and now I am seeing them much better with a screen like this. Truth is, looking at pictures on it is better than any 35mm print, though not quite at a 35mm slide of quality.

Dell should give me a cut for saying this.

Long ago I told people not to shoot on 1MP and 2MP digital cameras instead of film, because in the future, displays would get so good the photos will look obviously old and flawed. That day is now well here. Even my 3MP D30 pictures don't fill the screen. I wonder when I'll get a display that makes my 8MP pictures small.