Camera Labs

Some few months ago, I calibrated my monitor and everything looked bad. So I went back to beforehand.

There's still a difference between my monitor and my laptop display. While the monitor's picture is more saturated, the laptop one is sharper.

regards,
HTG

I recently acquired a Colorvision Spyder 3 Elite (225 USD) it took only ten minutes and the difference was enormous! not only are they handy for making color accurate prints but also when adjusting the image in photoshop. before hand i was post-processing all my images way to dark so on other computers they looked awful but they looked just fine on uncalibrated monitor. Welly published a user review:

http://www.cameralabs.com/forum/viewtop ... der++elite

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Canon 40D + 70-200mm f/2.8L IS + 50mm f/1.8
Manfrotto 055CX3 + 496RC2
www.thomaslowe.com

Are you sending prints off to be printed or printing yourself? Mac screens have a very different gamma and white point to "PC" screens. Naturally, Mac screens are much brighter which causes no ends of problems when you go to send an image off to be printed.

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My Flickr

I think thats a brilliant idea, only problem I see with it is that some companies like Sony and Apple will disregard it as they do all to many standardizations and kill the whole standard in order to sell another product thats a little more shiny.

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Nikon D90
18-55mm VR
55-200mm VR
ML-L3 Wireless release

http://www.flickr.com/photos/97752536@N00/

Good point, I didn't think about that! Being an Apple user I should know lol.

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Graham
Flickr

I just received mine last Friday. It is great. It has sorted out both my laptops and improved slightly my iMac 24" screen.

Warning though, the device does have a cheap feel to it. The packaging is just awful and the software is ok, but not great. At the start of the installation process on my mac I was presented with some Chinese (or similar) writing, so I had to randomly press a button to try to get to the next stage. After that it is ok. On my PC, it is all in English, so seems to be a mac bug only. The screen that is in Chinese is actually a language selection screen, as I get the same screen on my PC, though in English...

I got the elite so I can calibrate all the screens I have to be exactly the same. I have not done that yet, but will post how it goes once I have done so. If you only have one screen etc, you may want to go for the pro, which is around 50 lower I think. I have heard that only the software is different...

D

..SIDE NOTE..

If you view photos on a Pc/Mac that has a crap Graphics card then most photos you look at will look terrible, it's not just down to the screen. If in doubt check your G card capabilities.

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Bigger boys did it and ran away!
Nikon D40 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G EDII. Sigma 70-300 f4-5.6 Nikon nikkor 50mm f1.8D
Fuji F610 Super CCD 12Mp Compact

Flickr

How so? Graphic card drivers may give additional functionality when it comes to colour adjustment but it's not limited by the hardware itself.

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Graham
Flickr

Is there a free route to go of sufficient quality for calibrating a monitor?

No.

You can tweak your monitor's gamma manually, but then how do you know that it's accurate? You can only gauge that by printing and printing is not free.

At the end of the day, investing in a £50 calibration device will save you a fortune in the long run. My general principle is this, if a calibration device costs less than 10% of your photography gear then you are really silly if you spend that much on photo equipment but are too cheap to buy the one device that will make your prints look better.

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PhilipGoh.com

ive just recieved and used my colour vision s[yder2express. when you finish it allows you to do a before and after and it looked really good. although now looking through my photos im finding alot are high in contrast so i dont know wheather that poor photography or the calibrator.

this is kinda question for someone that has the spyder expess but when it starts it asks you to tick the types of variations you can make on your monitor: contrast, brightness and backlight. i want too sure on the backlight one so i left that unticked... could that be a reason for the high contrast?

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gear:
Canon EOS 50D w EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens
Canon powershot G10
Canon film SLR EOS 1000f w EF 35-80mm f/4.5-5.6 & EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6mm

Wish List:
Canon 60mm f/2.8 macro

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theresas_diaries/

another question... when viewing my monitor should i be looking at where the calibrator sat to get the right colour. since my monitor is LCD depending on where i sit i get a slight change in brighness and contrast.

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gear:
Canon EOS 50D w EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens
Canon powershot G10
Canon film SLR EOS 1000f w EF 35-80mm f/4.5-5.6 & EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6mm

Wish List:
Canon 60mm f/2.8 macro

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theresas_diaries/

You should read the on-screen instructions. They're concise and they're there for a reason.

LCD monitors do not have brightness or contrast controls. They only have back lighting, so make sure that's the only option that is ticked. Also, make sure that you're calibrating the screen with the caddy attached. There's a piece of green transparent plastic on the caddy that goes over the sensor. If that isn't there, the resulting profile is going to make your monitor look greenish.

I've found that after profiling, all the photos that I'd edited before calibration appear really dark and contrasty. The reason for this is simple. Before calibration, the gamma of your LCD is usually going to be really high and the contrast fairly low. When you edit your photo, you then try to compensate for this by darkening your photos, bumping up saturation, and increasing contrast. If you sent your photos to print, you'll see that it's substantially different from what you see on screen.

You're probably seeing something similar. I'd trust the calibration device, assuming that you've calibrated it correctly.

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PhilipGoh.com

this is my recommendation too. quality is totally good enough for an enthusiast photographer. its extremely worth it if you watch your pictures on different screens (laptop and your main workstation for example) and want them to look the same or you want to print them.

it will also improve the "average" user experience when you show them on the internet. because with an uncalibrated monitor you adjust your images to the random properties of YOUR monitor, then the internet user looks at it on ANOTHER monitor with random settings, so the potential for some things beeing way off is bigger than if at least the picture came calibrated to a random monitor.


with the colorvision spyder 2 express software you cant really chose many settings, but it has good defaultsettings.
if you want more control and know how to use a console window, there is this free software called argyll, it does all the stuff that the "pro" software from the big manufacturers does and it works with the spyder. but its not quick and easy (but you will learn a lot about colormanagement by reading the documentation).

I fully agree! Since two months I own the Spyder Pro. First of all, in my case the brightness was too high. That´s the reason the pictures I sent in to print were much too dark. Even in other software I see much more detail than before. So I can advice it to anyone to buy such a device!

Kind regards,

ngc94227