This IS the Avid L2: RE: [Avid-L2] Monitor calibration

Friday, May 23, 2014

RE: [Avid-L2] Monitor calibration

Thanks Martin, that makes a lot of sense.

Andi

To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thu, 22 May 2014 20:20:00 -0700
Subject: Re: [Avid-L2] Monitor calibration

Andi,

One of the most important reasons to achieve uniform calibration across the board has to do with the way your eyes, in conjunction with your brain, interpret color.  In simple terms:  We don't see color in absolute terms.  Your brain is constantly adjusting what white, black and other color might be based on the information it is receiving from the overall scene.  This is why you can put on green sunglasses   and, after a short adaptation period, still see white as white, etc.

If you have a field of view dominated by monitors not matched to a good degree, the decisions you make regarding color might not be consistent.  If you focus on the grading monitor your brain will adapt to that monitor's calibration, if you are going back and forth it will adapt to some in-between that is almost impossible to predict.

The other really bad problem with having a bunch of computer monitors in your field of view is that they usually operate at five to ten times the white point luminance of a calibrated video monitor.  You are, effectively, looking at light bulbs.  The first thing anything needs to do to a computer monitor or any display going into a color grading room is to dim it down as far as it will go or until you reach somewhere in the order of 30fL or about 103cd/m^2.  In cases where they simply can't get down that low other approaches might be necessary.

-Martin Euredjian
  Raptor Scientific