My pictures are never printed. Is there any point in buying a better monitor?

Question

My monitor is pretty cheap and its colours are horribly dependent on the viewing angle, the moon and whatnot. I could edit my pictures on my old CRT, but its contrast and sharpness are quite bad.

On the other hand, I never print my images anyway but only publish them on the web. Thus, the important thing is actually what they look like on other people's (non-photographer's) monitors.

In this case, is there any point in spending money on a better monitor or even a calibration set?

Asked by user1080125

Answer

Yes, there is a point. It will let you see your own photos more accurately. Since you do not print them, I assume you look at them on your own monitor.

Even if it is only for others, non-calibrated monitors differ widely but they are improving at least in the mid-range with the advent of LEDs (and eventually OLEDs), so over time people will see your images more accurately. Having a good monitor will let you know better how you images will appear to others too then.

Calibration goes a step further and is highly recommended if you manipulate your images since it will let you see the effect of your changes. Otherwise you can introduce very unnatural looking colors.

If you have to choose one though, I'd go for a better monitor. You can always add calibration later. Finally, if you do not require a huge display size, great color-calibratable monitors are no longer than expensive. I always recommend the NEC P221W even though I don't work for NEC ;) but I spent years evaluating LCD displays professionally. I bought two of those refurbished for $237 each while they go for $450 new. There is also a 24" version, the P241W.

Answered by Itai

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Why don't you need to calibrate a camera's LCD screen?

Question

I saw this question from Leon Neal on Twitter a while back:

If a computer screen needs constant calibration and checks, how come the screens on our cameras lack that facility?

I can think of a few potential answers but I'm not sure any of them completely cover it:

1. Because it's too small to be used for fully accurate work anyway (so near enough is good enough).
2. Because it's only for previewing, not for editing.
3. Because it's not usually the last screen we view a photo on: it's normally going to be copied onto a computer so colour management can be left until later.

However if you think of a press photographer at a news event, perhaps shooting JPEG for speed and filing the pictures over the air straight from the camera to a news desk, then none of those reasons really hold water. Surely they have a valid need to check that the camera's colour reproduction is faithful?

So: is it in fact possible to calibrate a camera's LCD? If so, why do so few of us bother? And if not, why not?

Answer

Two words: "ambient" and "context".

At the risk of making what sounds like a "No true Scotsman" argument, "real" monitor calibration is always in the context of the ambient lighting conditions. Not only do the pertinent standards (ISO 12647 and related) specify the lighting levels and colour temperatures under which critical colour work should be performed, pro-level calibration devices sample the ambient light as well as what's coming from the monitor. Since both the actual value of the max black and the apparent value of the max white depend on the ambient lighting, you can't really make even the basic global contrast adjustment without regard to ambient. (And if you are calibrating your monitor under one set of lighting conditions and using it under another, you're fooling yourself -- you're not really doing that much better than an educated eyeball calibration would have gotten you.)

In terms of actual calibration, then, you would pretty much need to do a fresh calibration every time you look at the LCD (or, at least, for every shooting session). And you'd have to hold the camera at the same angle under the same lighting every time you used that profile (or get used to using a sealed viewing environment, like a HoodLoupe or a dark cloth/viewing tent). If you have time to be messing about like that, you're probably not shooting breaking news or sports action.

Recent cameras will allow you to do an educated eyeball calibration, at least within the limits of the device. All you need is a reference image on the card. But unless the screen is way out of whack, I'm not convinced of the utility of anything other than the basic brightness setting (which is a contrast setting in the context of ambient lighting). If you can count the number of mireds you are off by on one hand, you won't be able to tell the difference without an external reference anyway, and I don't recall running across any cameras that allow you to manually adjust gamma conversion curves and so on in-camera (although many of the better ones will let you create your own presets externally and import them to the camera).

We have ways of calibrating the capture instead, which is of far greater utility. That includes things like setting a white balance (auto, camera presets, or custom, all with fine tuning for preferred deviations like warmth), including calibration targets (from a simple grey card to more comprehensive targets like a ColorChecker or SpyderCube) in images, global and channel histograms and blinkies (highlight warnings). And if the colours really are that critical (say for advertisement product photography), you're almost always going to be using a "colour to target" tool in post to match a Pantone specification anyway.

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What's the best way to calibrate my wide-gamut display used with two different computer systems?

Question

I have a Dell U2410 monitor hooked up to two computers: a Windows machine via HDMI, and my MacBook Pro (running Lion) via DisplayPort.

The output from Windows is great: colours are true and text is sharp as a tack, but from my Mac it's a bit different. The colours differ from what is shown on my MacBook's display and anti-aliasing on text is a bit dodgy.

I'm a complete newbie here, so I was hoping someone could give me some tips on calibrating this display to get it to display with high fidelity to what's appearing on my MacBook display. (Software/hardware) tools, techniques, etc.

Answer

Unfortunately, the monitor you have cannot be H/W calibrated and I have no idea what it does with its internal LUTs. You have two options at this point:

1. Return it for a calibratable monitor. My recommendation is the NEC P241W which I own two off (New they are $450 but I about them refurbished for $237) in addition to one of NEC's 30" model (LCD3090WQXi).
2. Calibrate the display on each computer and that means finding a H/W Calibrator solution which works on both platforms. There is a good description of calibration (and miscalibration) for your specific display here. It even says that banding issues are minimal which is great considering that you have to calibrate at the graphics card level.

Never used that display but if it is calibratable as the technical specs suggest, then you only need to calibrate it once to the sRGB color space and make sure the color profiles of both machines specify sRGB.

To calibrate it you need a color-calibrator, I use NEC Spectra View but I suppose Spyder 3 (as already suggested by @dpollitt) will do as well. The only thing you have to make sure is that you are calibrating the display, not the graphics card. Otherwise you have to calibrate twice and will have banding and perhaps even inconsistencies, particularly considering you use HDMI on Windows.

Now, if you want to take advantage of non-sRGB colors, you can but it will be more work. Also, only color-managed application will show color colors. Everything else, including most web-browser (color management is supported by some modern browsers but there is no guaranty since files often come with the wrong profile) will show distorted colors.

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How are ‘stills’ lenses calibrated differently to ‘motion picture’ lenses?

Question

I was watching this promo video about the new Sony PMW-F3 and one of the DOPs mentioned that stills and motion picture lenses are calibrated differently. This is around the 4 minute mark in the video. Does anyone know what the differences are and why they exist?

Cheers

Answer

In that particular instance, the speaker is talking about the manual focus-by-distance capability. Stills cameras have always tended to be focus-assisted (whether by SLR screens, rangefinders, or autofocus), while professional cinema (and, by extension, high-end video) has been done my measuring tape, marks on the set, and follow-focus for moving subjects.

The focus distance markings on stills lenses have traditionally been "close enough" at best -- mostly because the focus ring doesn't rotate very far, so there's a distinct difference in focus point between the beginning of the scale marking, the middle, and the end. If you have any lenses hanging about with a focus scale on them, try focusing to 4 feet 8 inches without using a focus aide (autofocus or your SLRs focusing screen). Then smoothly move the focus to, say, nine feet six inches, following a walking subject and keeping the subject in focus.

Cine lenses (particularly the PL mount lenses mentioned in the video) tend to have a very long focus ring travel, and the focus gearing is such that it's more linear than a typical still camera lens. (The focus cam spiral is tighter at one end of the lens's travel than at the other.) Because of that, the distance markings can be more precise (the width of the line doesn't cover an appreciable focus distance) and the markings can indicate much smaller differences in distance. That means that a focus puller (the cine equivalent of autofocus -- it's a person rather than a machine) can accurately and smoothly track moving subjects, or accurately shift focus from one subject to another in the frame.

You can get PL mount lenses adapted for a stills camera, but they'll drive you batty. Manual focus with a cine lens is accurate, but getting from infinity to the close focus point takes nearly a complete turn of the focus ring. Similarly, trying to use a still lens for video/cine means either finicky, unreliable focusing or and additional down-gearing apparatus for follow-focus that's subject to slippage and loss of registration on any preset witness marks you make on the dial during a dry run.

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How do I calibrate the diopter correction on my DSLRs viewfinder?

Question

The viewfinder on my camera has diopter correction, but is there a "correct" way to set it up? In the past I've just allowed the camera to auto-focus on a distant point, and then make sure that is as sharp as possible, but this seems to be prone to error, and reliant on the auto focus of the lens. Is there a better way?

Answer

Remember that what you're looking at through the viewfinder is the image from the lens projected onto a ground-glass viewing screen. You want the diopter to be adjusted so you can see that most clearly.

Fortunately, this means that you can use the etched lines on the focusing screen, as well as the status information in the viewfinder, to adjust the diopter. Point the camera at a featureless bright-but-not-overwhelming subject (a white wall, say), and set the lens's focus such that the wall is just a blur. Now ignore that and set the diopter so the focus screen markings and indicator information are as sharp as you can get them.

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