SmallHD consistently brings monitors with fantastic sets of features to the market, and with the new FOCUS 7 they’re at it again.
The SmallHD FOCUS was a great product. Around here, we use one every single day. The daylight-viewable screen and convenient form-factor was a grand slam from a company that consistently brings great products to market.
Now, they’ve announced the FOCUS 7, a similar product to its predecessor but with a few bells and whistles that address absolutely any issues I might have had with the original FOCUS.
Aside from the larger screen (which is a big plus for me — I don’t really like to pull focus on a 5″ monitor), there are some really great new features available on the FOCUS 7.
1000 Nit Brightness
What is a nit? Well, I’m not sure. However, I hear that you want more nits. The more nits the better. Gimme those nits.
All joking aside, functionally speaking, nits are just a measurement of brightness for LCD screens. The original FOCUS monitor was purely daylight viewable, and the FOCUS 7 will be even brighter than the previous monitor. The FOCUS had 800 nit brightness, whereas the FOCUS 7 is up to 1000 nits.
What does this mean? It pretty much means that even in the harshest full sunlight, you’ll still be able to see a crystal clear image. I’ve been in some situations with the original FOCUS where things were becoming a little hard to see. I bet the 200 extra nits will take care of that.
Full-Size HDMI Port
This is definitely my biggest gripe about the old FOCUS monitor. Anytime I wanted to use that monitor with a full-sized cinema camera and not a DSLR, I had to use an adapter, which was frustrating. Most of the adapters you can find are cheap and poor quality, and they would break in the middle of a shoot, necessitating a quick run to the electronics store. Very frustrating. For DSLR or mirrorless shooters, however, it was nice having that convenience.
The FOCUS 7 will have a full-size HDMI port. This will make it a bit easier to use it with bigger cameras.
1920×1200 Screen Resolution
Aside from all the other great features, the FOCUS 7 has better resolution than the previous FOCUS monitor. at 1920×1200 resolution, you’ll have all the resolution you need to make sure that you get critical focus in any situation.
Not to mention, along with that resolution, you get the benefit of their fantastic OS3 software — if you’ve had the pleasure to work with it, you know it’s good. Real-time scopes, waveforms, focus assist, false color, anything you’d want — and especially real-time 3D LUTS.
The FOCUS 7 is available now for $699
Top Image via SmallHD.