Low luminance after calibration

[wonwnx]

Hello,

I am quite new to screen calibration, and I have a few questions. I hope you can resolve my doubts.

Basically, I have a laptop connected to a larger screen (Samsung SyncMaster 2443). The picture on this screen looks warmer compared to the integrated one. Also, it is less bright.

I am in the process of scanning a few photo albums and, since I have to manually adjust the color curves on some photos (the ink has become yellowish/reddish in many of them), I wasn’t sure which of my two monitors I should use as a reference, so I decided to borrow a calibrator (Spyder3pro) to make sure the colors are right. I don’t need to print them or anything, but I still want them to look consistent.

As I said, I am new to this, so I don’t know if I’m doing things right. My idea was to generate two profiles for each monitor, one for D50 (for photo editing) and another for D65 (for general use). I don’t know if that makes sense, or if a monitor can only be truly calibrated for one. At the start of the calibration using DisplayCal, it tells me to manually adjust the white point using the embedded screen menu, but if I adjust it for D50, then it will differ much more from what it expects for D65. So, first question: Is it ok to leave the screen RGB settings by default and let DisplayCal use these as base values for both D50 and D65?

Another issue with my screen is the contrast. In my screen menu, brightness is set to 100%, and contrast to 75% by default. However, the higher the contrast, the colors look brighter and more similar. For instance, I am not able to differentiate between the grey and orange areas in google maps, or between the green chat bubbles and the background in whatsapp (see attached files). In order to do that, I have to lower the contrast from 75% to ~50% to be able to differentiate those colors, but then everything looks darker. As measured by my spider3pro, at 6500K, the maximum luminance goes from 130cd/m2 at 75% saturation, to 85cd/m2 at 55%, to ~50cd/m2 at 45%. Is this normal? Is it because my screen is aging and losing brightness (the specs indicate 300cd/m2 on paper)? And more important, how can I know the correct saturation value? I feel that the calibration would not be very precise if I have to eyeball such an important factor.

Also, luminance is far higher when configured for D50 than D65 at a lower saturation value (100cd/m2 vs 50cd/m2), and the temperature does not look “natural” on that screen when set to D65 values (but looks great on my laptop screen). For some reason, the screen default values are quite similar to D50 calibration, but it really struggles to show colors D65.

I hope you can guide through this process. I am 90% sure that my screen is aging/not suitable for “cold” colors, but the fact that I have to adjust the contrast manually and it has such an impact on the colors makes me think that I am not doing something correctly.

Thanks in advance.

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