Thank you for the report, Bill. Frankly, I very much questioned what you had
said but had no solid information with which to dispute it.
I use PhotoCal myself (I'm an amateur) and I'm very satisfied with my Sony
Trinitron (Dell-branded) monitor.
I have a Solux desklamp and I find it provides me with accurate renditions of
my prints so as to compare them with the screen.
Maris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Fernandez" <bill_sub@billfernandez.com>
To: <filmscanners@halftone.co.uk>
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 4:46 PM
Subject: filmscanners: OptiCal correction/retraction
| Hi gang--
|
| I have to correct some erroneous information I contributed a couple
| of weeks ago.
|
| It turns out that OptiCal and the monitor Spyder can only be used as
| a colorimeter (to measure color temperature and light intensity) of
| your monitor, NOT your room lights. ColorVision tech support says
| they don't support the use of OptiCal/Spyder for room lights and I've
| been getting wacky results in making the attempt so it looks like
| they're right.
|
| I also made a mistake in stating that if you use halogen viewing
| lights you should adjust your monitor to the same color temperature
| as those lights. It turns out that to do this you'd have to turn
| down the blue channel so much that you'd get dingy images and very
| little tonal gradation (on your monitor) in the blues.
|
| These misstatements came from misinterpreting some mentoring I'm
| getting from an accomplished professional in this field.
|
| What's still true is that if you want to be able to compare an image
| on the screen to a physical print right next to it then the color
| temperatures of the viewing light and the monitor must be the same,
| and the brightness of the light reflected off a white paper in your
| viewing area must be the same as the brightness of your monitor.
|
| A new twist on this is that you can still do reasonably good
| comparisons without having to match color temperature and brightness
| if you do not have the print viewing area next to your monitor. That
| is, if the viewing area and the monitor are never both in your field
| of view at the same time, and if the environment around your monitor
| is dark enough not to affect you're eyes' interpretation of the
| colors on the monitor, then you can look at the monitor, "memorize"
| the color and tone of part of an image, then turn your back on the
| monitor and examine a print in your viewing area. Apparently it only
| takes a few seconds for your eyes to adapt from one color temperature
| to the other.
|
| Hope this helps,
|
| --bill
|
|
|
|
| >>"OptiCal lets you use the Spyder as a Colorimeter! You can use it
| >>to measure the actual color temperature of your viewing lights be
| >>they halogen incandescents, high CRI flourescents or whatever, then
| >>it lets you set your monitor to THAT color temperature rather than
| >>to one of the generic standards (5,000K or
| >>6,500K). "
| --
|
| ======================================================================
| Bill Fernandez * User Interface Architect * Bill Fernandez Design
|
| (505) 346-3080 * bill_sub@billfernandez.com *
| ======================================================================
|
