Monitor calibration - gallery viewing

Not sure this is the right place.Please move if it isn't. I was looking at Ralph Lambrecht's site, Darkroom Magic, last night and saw there was a kind of step wedge to help you check if your monitor was properly set up to view his pictures as they are portrayed.

He suggests that monitors should be properly calibrated but doesn't go on to suggest what this involves but does say that adjustment of brightness contrast and gamma may help you distinguish all sections on his step wedge. My set up allowed me to distinguish his first and second stages( highlights) but not his final shadows steps of 98 and K(100) steps. I think that after running through the whole gamut of alterations I could perform on my screen I was just about to be able distinguish 95 from 98 but not 98 from K.

Has anyone tried this step wedge test and if so have you been able to read both ends, especially the full shadows end? If so how did you do it or how does one calibrate a monitor?

That covers B&W pics but then what about colour? Looking at scanned pics and seeing what the poster sees when posting is bad enough when we then base our comments on how faithful our monitor's reproduction may or may not be but we may each have a less than accurate picture which is also different for each of us.

To assist us to see the same as each other in the gallery and as far as possible see a faithful reproduction of what the poster has scanned in, is there any standard drill involving an equivalent of a test neg both colour and B&W that could be posted to help us do this with of course simple instructions?

I remember looking at PE's pictures of several colour charts and feeling fairly happy that what I saw was what he had posted based on his comments but on the other hand I have seen several colour pics recently that looked too blue and one that was very red/magenta. Sometimes other comments confirm what I am seeing but sometimes I am not so sure and equally it might also be an accurate reflection of what the camera saw. Sometimes the poster will say: "Yes, the rocks/bricks etc were actually this red/blue on the neg" but not always.

There may be no perfect answer of course but there may be some standard we can attempt get to.

Thanks

pentaxuser

A good place to start, with ways of getting close without purchasing calibration software and hardware. Tutorials and good explanations, links to other information and methods:

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

Lee

You calibrate you monitor by using a spectrophotometer like the Display 2 from GretagMacbeth, ColorCal from Spyder, etc, etc. A calibration unit will cost about 200-300 USD. But most important is to have a monitor that can be calibrated by hardware, if you want to have reliable color fidelity. If you are willing to make a compromise in color fidelity and quality, you can use a good midrange monitor that doesn't have hardware calibration and get acceptable results. That's what I do. I use a Philips W200W6, and calibrate it with a GretagMacbeth Eye-One Display2. I have good results. Of course, not up there with the Eizo screens or top end NEC, but good enough for my purposes.

There are "optical" methods for calibrating a monitor, but the human eye is not a reliable tool to judge color. You might get acceptable results, but you will not have a "calibrated" monitor.

Lee L said:

A good place to start, with ways of getting close without purchasing calibration software and hardware. Tutorials and good explanations, links to other information and methods:

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

Lee

Click to expand...

Koren recommends QuickGamma which I heartily endorse.

I use Spyder2 Pro. The calibration process covers all aspects of viewing images (black & white and colour, contrast/brightness/ white & black points etc etc).

It's recommended if you want to have control over your images, unfortunately it is unrealistic to expect uniformity of viewing across the web.