Who are the ISF?
ISF stands for Imaging Science Foundation, an organisation founded by Joel Silver and Joe Kane in 1994. The main goal of the ISF is to promote the correct application of industry standards to all forms of video reproduction.
To this end, the ISF work with manufacturers and specialised installers and AV professionals to supply the training and consultancy required to correctly design displays and how to properly calibrate them once they are installed.
What is display calibration?
The image that is displayed on screen is a function of all the parts of the video chain. The DVD player, video processor, AV receiver, cables and of course the display itself, exert their own influence on the video signal.
The goal of display calibration is to use the available controls to correct for these variances and ensure that the final image matches the industry standards as closely as possible. It is only possible to perform an accurate calibration using tools that enable colours displayed on screen to be measured accurately.
Can my display be calibrated?
Every display that I have ever seen has included four basic calibration controls, contrast, brightness, colour saturation and sharpness. Setting these controls correctly can have a massive impact on the quality of the displayed image.
To perform a full calibration to industry standards requires access to a number of advanced controls and on some displays these are hidden from consumers in the displays “service menu”. An ISF professional will know how to access these hidden menus on displays that use them and so it is almost 100% certain that some form of detailed calibration can be performed to move the display closer to industry standards.
What does vary is just how closely the display can be made to match the standards! Typically the better the display the better the calibration that can be achieved thanks to the availability of all required calibration options and suitable memory profiles to store the calibrated settings for each source device.
Why isn’t my display calibrated at the factory?
Quite simply, it is impossible for the display to come from the factory with a perfect calibration! The image in screen is affected by a number of factors most of which are outside the control of the display manufacturer:
Source Equipment
Cables
Room Lighting
Etc….
Two DVD players from the same batch can have a quite different output thanks to the tolerance of components used. Any switching in the path will add it’s characteristics and the these will all need to be adjusted out.
The best that the factory can do is create an averaged set of profiles for each display with one which hopefully gets each model close to the ball park of industry standards – some companies do this well but sadly most still do not.
How can I find someone to calibrate my display?
The ISF maintains a list of all people who have been trained and have passed the ISF exam on their website at
http://www.imagingscience.com/dealer...ited%20Kingdom. Only those listed as having purchased calibration equipment can consider offering the service and even then many of these do not actively offer a calibration service to general customers.
Alternatively, calibrators who are actively performing calibrations around the UK are encouraged to post a copy of their calibration certificate in the opening thread of this forum.
As a third option, there are several calibration companies who are active supporters of the AV Forums and would value enquiries from interested forum members!
Also note that many calibrators offer a nation wide service.
