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Monitor calibration -- how often?


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17 minutes ago, arterra said:

 

I have one of those. Last time I saw it ...........it was covered in cobwebs :o

 

Cheers,

Philippe (I should marry, shouldn't I?) :huh:

You mean a Steenbeck?

Should have looked after it. Mine is in demand., purrs like a kitten and makes me more than stock photography. I even had an enquiry from Hungary last month,  but my requirement for a return air ticket and a hotel (for me) put him off.

www.londonsteenbeck.eu5.org/

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49 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Seriously, I was told that some of my images were a bit dark a couple of years ago. I did a Win7 calibrate and all's apparently well.

Incidentally, do my pix look OK to you?.......

 

I'm probably not the best one to ask, but they look OK to me. Personal taste tends to take over at some point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, GS-Images said:

 

With CRT monitors which fade fairly quickly, they would need calibrating quite often if they're used a lot. They also need more warm-up time on each use before they display colours accurately.

 

With anything more modern (which I'm sure all of us use now), it isn't necessary very often at all. I used to be an Electronics Calibration Engineer, and despite having to calibrate test equipment every 6 months to a year (British Standards insisted), barely anything ever needed adjustment. Electronics just doesn't drift most the time, at least not to any extent that would matter for something like an LCD monitor.

 

That only covers the electronics though, not the LCD itself and backlighting. I know some displays use LED backlighting and I would have THOUGHT they would never dim in any noticeable way, but don't quote me on that as higher power LED's maybe different from what I used to work with. With other backlighting though, I know the intensity can get less over time. I'm honestly unsure what sort of lights used to be used for backlighting before monitors used LED's though. Anyway, that only covers brightness and contrast, but I'd doubt that colours of any LCD monitor would ever change. Of course someone will tell me they will, and I'm sure it happens to some. Components can change in their value over time, but only really capacitors, and once they start to go you'll likely see other issues rather than colours changing.

 

I recalibrate my monitor rarely, as it isn't needed. I did do it a few months ago though but that was because I was told that a lot of my images were too bright. I was amazed, but after recalibrating it, I saw that my monitor was set way too dark, hence me upping the brightness too much while processing. I vaguely remembered turning my monitor brightness down months before that to rest my eyes as it was too bright for me, and I forgot about it and never changed it back. I ended up going through a lot of images and re-processing to re-upload to Alamy! Whoops, a silly mistake.

 

Sorry for such a long response to a quick question!   :D

 

Geoff.

 

Thanks for your expertise. My Samsung monitor is pretty middle-of-road (budget constraints). It's also several years old. However, the colours look true to me. I calibrated a few months ago with my "colormunki", and things still look OK to me. 

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I used to calibrate my monitors about once a year, and there was hardly ever a change between them.  I upgraded to Mac's with Retina monitors which didn't support my old Spyder, so I haven't calibrated the monitors on them, and haven't had any issues with colour or density.

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1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

Seriously, I was told that some of my images were a bit dark a couple of years ago. I did a Win7 calibrate and all's apparently well.

Incidentally, do my pix look OK to you?.......

They look good to me. Not too dark.

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Thankyou, AWB, LR auto tone as always with a bit of special sauce but not much usually. I rarely have to touch WB except in dodgy artificial light.

As for the RM, London Transport have to get the credit for that. Just my usual bit of vibrance- I probably left the saturation alone on that one.

Crumbs, it is very RED, isn't it? LR says 93%.

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2 hours ago, spacecadet said:

Thankyou, AWB, LR auto tone as always with a bit of special sauce but not much usually. I rarely have to touch WB except in dodgy artificial light.

As for the RM, London Transport have to get the credit for that. Just my usual bit of vibrance- I probably left the saturation alone on that one.

Crumbs, it is very RED, isn't it? LR says 93%.

 

Another one for you. Just had a look at your first page and the images look fine on my iMac monitor. In fact your images look better than mine do.

 

Would you have a quick check of mine please?

 

Allan

 

sorry to highjack the thread.

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Some on your first page are a bit light by my standard- the airfield ones, I might have brought down the highlights somewhat but that may be just because LR tends to clip my highlights. But wait for a second opinion.

I have quite a strong (by some standards) clarity and vibrance preset- maybe worth a look, but largely a matter of opinion.

 

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Come to think of it I usually have to pull down my highlights quite a bit, but I think that's probably just the downside of using LR Auto Tone. On balance it does a good job for me and pulling down one slider beats twiddling with 4 or 5.

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2 hours ago, spacecadet said:

 

Here's my version of JGPN44. Hope you don't mind, I'll delete it shortly.

 

Thank you I will have a look at it next to my image in a while. Have to go on urgent job.

 

Allan

 

 

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1 hour ago, GS-Images said:

 

Don't forget to flush afterwards Allan.

 

Sorry.   :)

Geoff. 

 

Phew! I nearly followed it.:wacko:

 

Allan

 

 

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