A couple of years ago I bought a 7" Teletest CyclopsHD High Bright HD-SDI Steadicam monitor which I stumbled onto online. It was on sale for about € 700,- ex VAT at Teletest. The brilliant idea I had was to replace the analog standard monitor on my Steadicam Scout, which was unusable outside.
The resolution on that Teletest monitor however turned out to be just aweful, I could not tell if anything was in focus or not, and the colours were all over the place. And there was no access to a menu (only in the factory I was told). Pretty disappointing all together for a monitor which was normally priced around € 1.100,- ex VAT.
So I have been looking around for a nice steadicam monitor for a very long time. But I don't fly my rig every day, therefore a lot of high brightness (steadicam) monitors cost many thousands of euros and are way beyond my budget.
But............. today I upgraded my Steadicam Scout with a 7" MustHD 703S Hyper-Brite monitor. And I'm really amazed how well this monitor performs in full direct sunlight. No sunhood needed here.
The monitor is 2200 Nits (!!!) 1920x1200, 3GSDI in+loop out, HDMI in+loop out. Very good build and image quality, coloraccuracy, sharpness and has focus assist, false color, zebra, markers, histogram, H/V mirror and more.
The only thing it doesn't have is a virtual horizon. But my Sony FS7 has a (somewhat acceptable, sort of) horizon in it.
And.......(drumroll please) the monitor is only around € 500,- ex VAT here in the Netherlands. I also bought the V-mount plate for it for about € 30,- ex VAT.
So I must say that, as a not-daily-flying-Steadicam-Operator, after a day of testing I'm more than happy with it. I'm excited for my coming steadicam gig next week !!!
