Monitor Calibration Hardware

[geofftelforduk]

Guys

I need your help!

Would anyone have any idea where you can hire Monitor Calibration Hardware! I am thinking of the Spyder type devices that you attach to your monitor to calibrate it!

Any help would be appreciated as I dont want to have to buy one of these for what I hope will be a reasonably infrequent task!!

Thanks

[tomson]

In theory you should calibrate your equipment regularly, so it might be worth your while buying summut like:
http://www.pantoneshop.co.uk/product...products_id=79

Incidentally there's a review of calibration hardware in this months Pro Photographer magazine.

[geofftelforduk]

Hi tomson

Thanks for your reply! I can honestly say that now that I have spent £1300 on a 20" iMac I really dont expect to have to calibrate the screen regularly!! Why do you pay sooooo much and then have to calibrate the stupid thing so often??

Cheers mate!

[hornydragon]

you could have it pro calibrated Mr D maybe able to help as he uses calibrated monitors or an ISF tech may be able to assist

[chrisc0le]

Originally Posted by geofftelforduk

Hi tomson

Thanks for your reply! I can honestly say that now that I have spent £1300 on a 20" iMac I really dont expect to have to calibrate the screen regularly!! Why do you pay sooooo much and then have to calibrate the stupid thing so often??

Cheers mate!

why not? apple just charge more for thier hardware doesnt mean its not subject to colour variances..

[barongreenback]

I think it's something you're supposed to do fairly frequently. The Huey is pretty reasonably priced and I think adjusts according to the ambient light.

[agoodey]

I have seen the Huey in action and have been very impressed - For the price you can't go wrong. I personally use an Eye-one but only because I have a dual monitor setup and the Huey can only calibrate one monitor...

With regards to calibrating the screens on a regular basis, I calibrate mine every 14 days but don't normally notice much difference between the calibrations unless there has been a major temperature swing. - In my experience operating temperature does seem to be the one variable that makes a difference in my setup [G5 Powermac with 2 x Cinema Displays.]

The Huey is pretty reasonably priced and I think adjusts according to the ambient light.

Correct! This is one of the great things about the Huey - the ambient light sensor is permanently active so at least the brightness of your screen is always "calibrated!"

[geofftelforduk]

Originally Posted by chrisc0le

why not? apple just charge more for thier hardware doesnt mean its not subject to colour variances..

I see exactly what you mean its just I dont understand how something like that can change so often!!

i have had my iMac for 10 months now! Do you think I would notice a visible difference if I calibrated it now!?

Thanks for your comments chris0le

[Mr.D]

Originally Posted by geofftelforduk

I see exactly what you mean its just I dont understand how something like that can change so often!!

i have had my iMac for 10 months now! Do you think I would notice a visible difference if I calibrated it now!?

Thanks for your comments chris0le

There are so many variations in the chain leading to your monitor ( graphics card , driver release) that even if it were calibrated from the factory for idealised viewing conditions it would always be innacurate somewhere. You can get away with having a hardware calibrated display and no software lut (other than a seklection of idealised ones to change between colourspace standards) but then you have to ensure that you can access the required controls on the display and you'd still need to rpofile it with a sensor to model the gamma and verifiy it was correct).

So most of the calibration devices build a software LUT (lookup table) that fits the desired colourspace curve to the profiled response curve of the monitor (some just read the white and black points and fit the curve into the range without bother to check for bumps in between).


Additionally if you have an accurately profiled display chain you can (within reason) switch between colourspaces by varying the LUT rather than recalibrating the hardware.

If you are remotely serious about image creation and manipulation calibration is a necessity.

[geofftelforduk]

Mr D - so what you are saying is that I should calibrate my monitor!!

What do you think of this one:

CLICK HERE

[Mr.D]

I don't have any experience of that one. I use spyder2pro on my PC at home which gives me a decent enough rec.709 calibration for video (srgb is probably what you want for digital photography).

The one I use at work is a custom system that's probably about the most accurate calibration I've seen for film and video (16bit rgb lut derived from 3d colourspace mapping). But they all work in roughly the same way : read the monitor ( profile it) and then generate a LUT (look up table) to correct it that loads into the graphics card.

The mechanical bit is fairly simple its the accuracy of the colourspace models in the software that generates the LUT that you really pay for. Spyder2pro as I've said seems to be accurate enough for simple video colourspaces , the more complicated cineon film colourspace is so inaccurate as to be meaningless.

Gretag macbeth have a good rep so it will probably be half decent at least.