September 2, 2022

What about a monitor arm?

So, I am using a Dell 2413 monitor to run lightroom and hence to show me the live view display when I set up a specimen for photography.

I want to solve two problems. One is that when my hand is on my specimen, my monitor is 4 feet away. More aggravating is that my camera is turned 90 degrees from my monitor orientation. So when I move the specimen right, it moves up on the screen and so forth.

The distance between my current monitor location and the axis of my photographic setup is 48 inches.

A monitor arm (mounted to the wall) would allow me to solve both the distance issue and to spin the monitor from landscape to portrait orientation.

A significant extra benefit is that getting the monitor up off the desk suddenly makes a bunch of desk space available.

Two notes. One is that I need the monitor image to be rotated counterclockwise (to the left). It is important to verify that the monitor stand allows this if a stand allows only a 90 degree rotation.

The other note is that the Canon EOS utility allows the live view image to be rotated by 90 degrees either clockwise or counterclockwise. It can also be expanded to full screen.

Lightroom live view also has a rotation button (and you can go round and round through all 4 possible orientations). It can also be expanded to full screen and if anything makes even better use of screen real estate.

Given the ability to rotate the image via software makes the ability to rotate the screen between landscape and portrait even less important.

Amazon basics wall mount

5.4 pounds, $103, extends 26, up/down (mostly up) 14 inches.

The Alex Lee review shows him rotating it 90 degrees clockwise to landscape, but the Vesa mounting being square gives you two choices about how to start that off.

ErGear wall mount

4.8 pounds, $45, extends 18, 11 inches up/down.

MountUP wall mount

4.5 pounds, $43, extends 22, 11 up/down.

I got the Amazon Arm

I got the Amazon Arm. They offered an open box arm for $94 and it was just fine. I made a mounting "plate" from a 7x11 inch piece of 3/4 inch plywood. I wanted to move the arm position 4 inches sideways from the location of the stud in the wall. I used three 3 inch long wallboard screws to hold the plywood to the wall, and four 10-24 bolts (1 inch long) to hold the arm base to the plywood. I put T-nuts in the back of the plate.

This seems nice and solid. I'm not sure what I would have gotten if I had bought one of the less expensive arms, but the Amazon Basics arm was a good choice.


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Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org