-
LCD and Plasma monitor calibration
‘m starting a new thread to address a very old and contentious subject that in my opinion has not been answered satisfactorily elsewhere on Creative Cow, and believe me, I must have read every post on monitor calibration.
What is the best way to calibrate an LCD (not production grade LCD) and/or a plasma monitor being fed by an Aja or BMD card?
Now before the ‘purists’ jump all over this with “you shouldn’t be using either for critical color work”, let me say this. In the last 2-3 years, LCDs and plasmas have penetrated post-production more quickly even than CRTs have disappeared. We all know that a production grade CRT is the best reference for color work, and some of us (including me) are lucky enough to have a great pro SD CRT for reference. But as a client monitor, for HD work, to save money, for any number of reasons, LCDs and plasmas are everywhere from super-high end to your cousin’s living room.
I was at one of the larger post houses in NYC a few weeks ago where the only HD monitors in two of their Inferno suites was a 23″ HP LCD. That’s what they were using as reference for very expensive spots that were going straight to broadcast. So lets move this discussion beyond what should be, to a practical solution for consumer level LCD and Plasma monitor calibration.
Has anyone found calibration tools to be particularly helpful? Spyder? The only way I can get my Panasonic TH-42PZ700U even close to my CRT is by using HD Link to raise the black level. The internal panny settings just won’t lift the blacks enough to be able to see pluge! But then HDMI has an 8-bit limitation causing banding on the monitor. Someone out there must have a better system than just eyeballing the monitor and tweaking it’s settings. Can we use LUTs? Please help. Thanks.
-
3 Replies
-
Get yourself a Wratten 47B photo filter (if you can find one big enough). That will simulate a ‘blue only’ gun. We used to calibrate a projector this way with decent results.
Jeremy
-
It only has to be big enough to cover your eye, yeah?
-
If you can operate that way, then yes you are absolutely right!
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up