Monitor calibration in home (uncontrolled) environment

[Ladislav]

I'm using two older Dell IPS displays (U2311H) in uncontrolled environment (home - study room) where light conditions are inevitable changing during the day but there is no direct light coming to the screens. Is there any way how to keep those displays at least approximately calibrated?

I have Datacolor Spyder Pro 4 which is mostly useless in my scenario. I would need to recalibrate my displays several times per day to match new light conditions.

What I would like to have is some solution which would store multiple profiles for different light conditions and switch between them when ambient light changes. The Spyder utility is only able to tell me e.g that calibration was done with Medium light but current light is Moderately low which is useless. I would like it to allow me doing new measurement for Moderately low ambient light and automatically switching between taken measurements depending on the ambient light. It could even approximate between these two when ambient light has another intermediate value which I haven't calibrate yet. Am I dreaming or is any such solution possible?

One problem I see is brightness settings on displays - Spyder utility cannot change it (why?) and I have to make adjustments manually during the calibration. I would still prefer to have calibration profile changed with warning that brightness needs to be changed.

 

[zim]

I just got an X-Rite ColorMunki Display which measures ambiant at intervals (you decide) and adjusts automatically. You can also set it up to just alert you if ambiant changes. It couldn't be simpler to set up.

Regards

 

[Ladislav]

I just got an X-Rite ColorMunki Display which measures ambiant at intervals (you decide) and adjusts automatically. You can also set it up to just alert you if ambiant changes. It couldn't be simpler to set up.

Regards

Thanks, so it looks like I simply chose wrong product as X-Rite display calibration tools have this feature in product description while Datacolor don't. At least Spyder 4 products can only signal that ambient light has changed but I don't see any settings to perform any action when the change is detected

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

It might be a cleaner solution to have a hood for your monitors. The calibration device is going to need to be placed on your screen to do a calibration. That's not friendly to have it going off every time the light changes, and a 5 or 10 minute process is required.

You might create profiles under the different lighting conditions and apply those depending on the lighting.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_8?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A281062%2Ck%3Amonitor+shades&keywords=monitor+shades&ie=UTF8&qid=1451339689&rnid=2941120011

Personally, I'd create my own by going to Hobby Lobby and buying some black foam core, self adhesive Velcro, and using a glue gun or tape to assemble it and the Velcro to attach it to my monitor.

It might not completely solve your problem, but it will go a long way towards evening out the light.

 

[mnclayshooter]

I would give a little consideration to researching blackout shades for the windows and some fixed-frequency light bulbs for your work space - nothing fancy - just consistent/or relatively consistent - don't mix two different light sources (incandescent/fluorescent/LED) and use all one type/lamp... if you go with LED, they are pretty good, but bear in mind that they can flicker, which can cause some crazy results.

That way you can have the best of both worlds, control over the light when you need it (you can blackout the exterior and control the interior) and a consistent light source/intensity in your workspace, and then open to the daylight when you're not working.

Blackout blinds aren't super expensive - they typically are like any other curtain or roll-up blind except they have a vinyl or other opaque backer on them. If they are true blackout - they have an edge channel or return on them that covers the edges so that no leakage occurs around them. A super simple way to accomplish this is get some black foamcore board at the office supply store and simply double-sided tape them to jamb of the window and have the blind run behind them.

Like Mt Spokane said, hoods can work to a point too. We use them in our office. We made them from foam core and some black felt (to provide a draped back cape/curtain to prevent back-glare from behind the user).

 

[zim]

It might be a cleaner solution to have a hood for your monitors. The calibration device is going to need to be placed on your screen to do a calibration. That's not friendly to have it going off every time the light changes, and a 5 or 10 minute process is required.

The initial calibration takes about 5 mins and requires the device to be on the screen. There after it just sits beside the monitor (but not pointing at it) measuring the ambient, it's not intrusive it's like a little friendly edit buddy ;D ok I need to get out more

 

[tolusina]

...... if you go with LED, they are pretty good, but bear in mind that they can flicker, which can cause some crazy results. .....

Only those LEDs that are PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) will flicker.
If the frequency of the pulse is high enough, the flicker, though present, will be of no consequence.
Sorry, I don't know the math nor have any hard numbers.

The flicker effect is similar in concept to the flicker of fluorescent tube lights.
Shoot some bursts in a room it by a single fluorescent, the white balance continually changes faster than AWB can compensate. The color of the light will change between the time the camera measures WB and the time the shutter operates. The higher the shutter speed, the worse the effect.

Set the shutter speed below 1/20 and the issue disappears because the lighting completes a full color shift cycle while the shutter is open.
Try with AWB, again with a fixed Kelvin value, again with a custom white balance where the reference frame is shot below 1/20.

Oh, the 1/20 shutter speed works on 60Hz U.S. mains. If your local mains run at 50Hz, expect clean results at 1/15, possibly 1/13 or 1/10.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

It might be a cleaner solution to have a hood for your monitors. The calibration device is going to need to be placed on your screen to do a calibration. That's not friendly to have it going off every time the light changes, and a 5 or 10 minute process is required.

The initial calibration takes about 5 mins and requires the device to be on the screen. There after it just sits beside the monitor (but not pointing at it) measuring the ambient, it's not intrusive it's like a little friendly edit buddy ;D ok I need to get out more

So its just changing the screen brightness. I read the issue to be that lighting in the room changed color as well as brightness. That is something that is very hard to deal with, monitor calibration does not do it, which is why it is recommended that a monitor be used in a dark room. No colored lights like sunset, fluorescent, or incandescent, or worse, a mixture.

The monitor brightness feature sounds nice, but using a shade or a darkened room eliminates the need for a attempt to fix the lighting by turning screen brightness up or down.

 

[zim]

It might be a cleaner solution to have a hood for your monitors. The calibration device is going to need to be placed on your screen to do a calibration. That's not friendly to have it going off every time the light changes, and a 5 or 10 minute process is required.

The initial calibration takes about 5 mins and requires the device to be on the screen. There after it just sits beside the monitor (but not pointing at it) measuring the ambient, it's not intrusive it's like a little friendly edit buddy ;D ok I need to get out more

So its just changing the screen brightness. I read the issue to be that lighting in the room changed color as well as brightness. That is something that is very hard to deal with, monitor calibration does not do it, which is why it is recommended that a monitor be used in a dark room. No colored lights like sunset, fluorescent, or incandescent, or worse, a mixture.

The monitor brightness feature sounds nice, but using a shade or a darkened room eliminates the need for a attempt to fix the lighting by turning screen brightness up or down.

Absolutely, it is what it is pretty cheap (not their top of the range) and it gets you in the ball park but more consistently and easily. Interestingly when I set it up I didn't really notice any difference to my old method which was good news all it's really done is save me a bunch of time.
Just because it does these auto compensations doesn't mean you can walk around all over the place switching lights on and off and get consistent results I hope the OP understands that you still need to control your environment as much as possible, I'd love to have a work space set up with constant light as you describe, just not practical for now.
Hope I'm not coming over as a fanboy for this stuff but I've been pretty happy with it so far.

 

[Rupp1]

I use a pair of older NEC monitors that come with x-rite sensor and self-calibrating software. Mac support is on the weak side but the monitors work fine, and the Spectraview software gets updated promptly. There are new models which do the same thing. As I recall, these were rated as the second best monitors, but half the price of the most expensive whose name, sorry, I can't remember.

Key to my system is ImagePrint by Colorbyte software. Once the monitors are calibrated, just save or export a TIFF (PDF and JPEG work too) from your editing program with the profile embedded. ImagePrint coupled with a higher end Epson pretty much gives you WYSIWYG with profiles for most papers, color or b&w, calibrated for 5 different kinds of view lighting. The license is by printer, not computer.