Any Spectrometer?

Home Forums Help and Support Any Spectrometer?

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #11358

    JacekK
    Participant
    • Offline

    Hi Florian and thank you for all your hard work and the wonderful, wonderful software you created.

    My question is this: does it matter which spectrometer one gets?

    I am a video editor and colourist working in high-end facilities which regularly professionally calibrate their monitors however I also work at home and don’t have the budget to pay the professional to come out and calibrate my monitors (he charges $500 per monitor!).

    For my Sony reference monitor I use the inbuilt self calibration utility and it works close enough to perfectly match the work monitors but my computer monitors are various colours and it disconcerts clients (and me!). For years I used my eyes and the X-Rite  i1 Pro and various borrowed Colorimeters with only modest success.

    Having discovered your wonderful software I can get closer to matching them all but in reading your forums it seems a Spectrometer is the best solution for accuracy. As you know they sell for thousands of dollars on  eBay but occasionally one comes up for auction for around for an affordable price,  especially the EFI ES-1000.

    Looking at your list of supported instruments it seems to be supported but is there any difference for calibrating to Rec. 709 between that model and X-Rite/GretagMacbeth i1 Pro or X-Rite i1 Pro 2? (The others you have listed NEVER come up for auction.) The professional guy above uses  a Colorimetry Research CR-250 for example. I know the X=Rites are all essentially for print but can I assume that for my purpose of video colour all spectrometers are the same in accuracy? Or do I need to bite the bullet and buy a $3000 one?

    Thanks again!

    #11364

    Vincent
    Participant
    • Offline

    These 2nd hand spectros may need some kind of re-certification which can be very expensive for high end models.

    Before jumping on that boat please consider what may have gone wrong in the past, so when you say:

    […]but my computer monitors are various colours and it disconcerts clients (and me!). For years I used my eyes and the X-Rite i1 Pro and various borrowed Colorimeters with only modest success.

    Which colorimeters? Some of them are not accurate and may even read worse than your i1Pro in dark patches.

    Did you try high res 3nm driver for i1Pro present in ArgyllCMS?

    Did you use this kind of 3nm spectral data (CCSS) with a device from  i1d3 family? Or did you just use 10nm reading and a matrix correction?

    Did your computer display suffer from uniformity problems? Measurement may match at the center of screen but pink/green/yellow tints may give you an overall mismatch. No specrophotometer could help you to solve that issue.

    What backlight technology have your computer displays? What backlight has your Sony reference display?

    The answers to those questions may reveal why you get those modest results and how to improve them with the smallest investment.

    Calibrite Display Pro HL on Amazon  
    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

    #11380

    JacekK
    Participant
    • Offline

    Thank you Vincent.

    The colorimeters I have used are my old Greta MAcbeth X-Rite i1 Pro, the i1Display Pro, i1 Display 2 Professional and the X-Rite ColorMunki Display. Multiple instances from various friends: as I come across people who own them I try them out.

    The displays I have are all different manufacturers and technologies and this is where the results are inconsistent – between monitors and not on single monitor uniformity problems. Each monitor is a different colour.

    The computer monitors are LED backlight while the Sony reference monitor is LCD.

    The method I used was the recommended method to download or choose the appropriate corrections and the profile & calibrate.
    I’m unsure what you mean by your suggestion:
    “Did you try high res 3nm driver for i1Pro present in ArgyllCMS?
    Did you use this kind of 3nm spectral data (CCSS) with a device from i1d3 family? Or did you just use 10nm reading and a matrix correction?”

    Could you possible advise me how I can try the 3nm driver? I can’t see any of that in th UI.

    I am looking at spectrometers because on reading the forums here it seems colorimeters are limited in their ability to read various technologies accurately. Also I recall Florian pointed out in a previous comment that unless a spectrometer has been dropped or abused there shouldn’t be any problem with it.

    Thanks again!

    #11381

    JacekK
    Participant
    • Offline

    These are the three monitors – far left is the Sony reference monitor which has the whites as expected.
    On viewing a complex multi coloured frame the differences are far less apparent and actually look to the eye quite similar.

    Attachments:
    You must be logged in to view attached files.
    #11392

    Vincent
    Participant
    • Offline

    The method I used was the recommended method to download or choose the appropriate corrections and the profile & calibrate.
    I’m unsure what you mean by your suggestion:
    “Did you try high res 3nm driver for i1Pro present in ArgyllCMS?
    Did you use this kind of 3nm spectral data (CCSS) with a device from i1d3 family? Or did you just use 10nm reading and a matrix correction?”

    Could you possible advise me how I can try the 3nm driver? I can’t see any of that in th UI.

    USB driver, the high res mode (3nm but “noisy”, instead of standard 10nm)
    http://argyllcms.com/doc/Installing_MSWindows.html
    You may need to disable current i1Pro driver.

    I am looking at spectrometers because on reading the forums here it seems colorimeters are limited in their ability to read various technologies accurately. Also I recall Florian pointed out in a previous comment that unless a spectrometer has been dropped or abused there shouldn’t be any problem with it.

    Thanks again!

    Use an spectrophotometer, like your current graphic arts spectro (let’s call it “low end”) to measure spectral power distribution.
    Then with spectral data measured by that spectrophotometer use a colorimeter because is faster (very fast if you compare it to your spectrophotometer), but now it will be correted thanks to spectal data measured from spectrophotometer.
    Use both devices, working together.

    Two ways:
    -from spectral data (i1Pro) you get “reference” measurements (XYZ coordinates), let the software compute for you a matrix which transform uncorrected colorimeter XYZ coordinates to the same values as the ones measured by your spectrophotometer.  This is a matrix correction
    -spectral data (3nm spectral data from WRGB if you can) + colorimeter firmware data. This is called “spectral corrections” (CCSS). This will be transformed to a matrix too but CCSS is “generic” for that backlight (the same for al i1DisplayPros) and actual matrix is computed based on each colorimeter firmware data. IMHO this the best way with a i1Pro and an i1DisplayPro.

    DisplayCAL documentation will be more detailed in this subject (CCSS and matrix)

    Of couse if you want a high end spectrophotometer, you could use in the same way I’ve just expained, as long as it is supported by ArgyllCMS. Same applies to a high end colorimeters. For example:
    i1Pro + Klein K10A
    JETI + i1DisplayPro
    JETI + Klein K10A
    etc…
    The best of both worlds. Measuring a high amount of patches for a custom LUT3D with a spectro will be a pain… too slow and dark readings may be not accurate as you think.

    K10-A on Amazon  
    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

    #11409

    JacekK
    Participant
    • Offline

    Thank you VIncent. I am on OSX but I’ll figure it out and let you know. Many thanks!

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.

Log in or Register

Display Calibration and Characterization powered by ArgyllCMS