My name is Jonathan Hamilton, I live just south of London in the UK with my beautiful wife and three fantastic children. I work full time as a company director. In my spare time, I help my wife run her online jewelrybusiness on Ebay and Etsy.
My wife Kelly has been making and selling jewelry online since 2010. She is great at coming up with new ideas and her designs are innovative and beautiful as well as being very affordable. I get involved with product photography. To begin with Kelly did her own photography with a basic $100 camera. This was fine to get started on eBay but once the product range started to broaden, we decided to take the business more seriously. We focussed on launching a new website and Amazon store and started to research what we would need for a proper photography setup.
Toward the back end of 2013, we invested in our first DSLR camera a Nikon D3100. We soon discovered that effective jewelry photography is no easy process. Determined to succeed, I researched YouTube for how to guides and tips. One evening I came across a video involving Photocubics Flashbox One. This looked almost too good to be true – an easy, quick way to get professional level photographs on your desktop. I contacted the owner Steve Bolson through his website: photocubicsinc.com Steve’s direct manner and no-nonsense approach appealed and in early 2014, I invested in a Photocubics Flashbox A10.
What I didn’t realise was that Photoshop was essential to do the final edits to each shot, that’s how much of a beginner I was! Fortunately, Adobe had just started selling the CC range of software where you pay a small monthly fee rather than a huge sum upfront for the software. So I invested in Photoshop and Bridge CC. At the time I had a regular PC with a 21” widescreen TFT monitor that had cost me no more than $180. After a few weeks getting used to the Flashbox, I realized that there were shades and gradients that I just couldn’t see on my basic monitor. At times, I found myself looking at the screen at an acute angle to see a shade that I knew was there. Eventually after a few more weeks I gave in and started to research quality photo-editing monitors. I found there were several credible comparison sites out there, but there were a number of aspects which bothered me:
- All the monitor comparison sites went into minute detail about each product. That is fine for detail-oriented people, but no good for other personality types.
- There is a lot of jargon in the industry – especially when considering photo-editing monitors. Researching terms like IPS and refresh rate led to even more detailed articles. There didn’t seem to be a getting started guide, especially for the niche applications like photo editing, gaming etc.
- Almost every site I visited was cluttered with hundreds of adverts. I understand that these sites need to monetise their content in some way in order to pay for the upkeep but it is often done excessively.
I decided to form this site to offer a simple, easy to understand guide to selecting the right 27” monitor for certain niche applications . Key aspects behind this site are:
- Selecting a 27”monitor is a technical journey. I have aimed to keep this site light and easy to understand. Images are used wherever possible to explain technical decisions. Eventually I will add videos to the site as well.
- This site is driven by YOU. If there is a monitor or a technical aspect that you would like me to cover, please email me or leave a comment.