Monitor White Point setting question

[Tony]

Apologies if the answer to this has been provided, I could not find a reference. My NEC monitor has a White Point setting of 6500K; I went to a lecture on colour management and was told that the 6500K setting is for the USA market and that I should change the White point to around 5500K for the UK. I profile the monitor using a Spyder Elite and assume any innate bias affecting white will be corrected by the ICC profile generated by Spyder Elite and therefore the White Point setting (before profiling) does not matter. I have to say that the screen whites look OK without any red or blue cast.

I will be grateful for any help in understanding this. Thanks.

Tony

[Simon Garrett]

I've not heard that one. Do you know why the lecturer suggested a different colour temperature for the UK? As far as I'm aware, sunlight is the same colour in the UK and in the US! I've had a good Google on the subject and I can't find any reason or recommendation to use a different white point in the UK. Perhaps there are different conventions adopted for the print/publishing industry in the UK? If so, I would have thought that would not affect most photographers.

[Bear]

Eizo recommends 5500K, 100 cd/m2, 2.2 gamma for photography work, 5000K, 80 cd/m2, 2.2 gamma for printing.

http://www.eizo.com/global/products/...e_Monitors.pdf

[Colin Southern]

Hi Tony,

In short, 5000K ("D50") is the standard for the printing industry, but it's quite a warm (yellow light) (think "tungsten lightbulb" type colour) (although not quite that warm), whilst 6500 is more typical for modern monitors, but it's quite blue (thing "flourescent light"). So "D50 is correct", but looks yellow, and "D65 is incorrect, but many find it nicer to work with from day to day".

Personally, I find 5000K too warm, and 6500K too cool, so I aim for about 5800. With regards to brightness, 80 to 100 cd/m2 is fine if you have low ambient lighting (preferred), but I think most would find it too low for more normal room lighting (I say "think" because my personal preference is to have very bright room lighting and very bright monitors (I run my monitors at 200 cd/m2). Gamma 2.2 is a given.

So all in all, really up to you Tony. For what it's worth, I recently re-profiled my home screen - went for 6500K - and just didn'[t like it one little bit, and so reset it lower (everything was just too cool, and I didn't seel confident about setting skin tones in that kind of cool environment).

Hope this helps.

[Bear]

The other thing about brightness, luminance, cd/m2 is that the higher the setting, the shorter your monitor life will be.

On color temp, if your calibration software allows you to select different profiles, by switching between them you will see very quickly the effects of color temp, luminance and gamma.

[Colin Southern]

The other thing about brightness, luminance, cd/m2 is that the higher the setting, the shorter your monitor life will be.

Not sure how true this holds up in practice though ... my main screen is over 5 years old now and still capable of over 225 cd/m2. In my "other life" as an IT tech, I don't think I've ever thrown one away with a worn-out backlight -- have certainly have a few backlights fail outright - and a few power supplies go - but for the most part they just seem to keep going forever.

[russellsnr]

Apologies if the answer to this has been provided, I could not find a reference. My NEC monitor has a White Point setting of 6500K; I went to a lecture on colour management and was told that the 6500K setting is for the USA market and that I should change the White point to around 5500K for the UK. I profile the monitor using a Spyder Elite and assume any innate bias affecting white will be corrected by the ICC profile generated by Spyder Elite and therefore the White Point setting (before profiling) does not matter. I have to say that the screen whites look OK without any red or blue cast.

I will be grateful for any help in understanding this. Thanks.

Tony

Hi, also have an NEC monitor and use Spyder 3 elite for calibration, as I am not really an expert on the subject all I can say is IMO after calibration with the Spyder the on screen colour does seem to be a lot better, I understand though that the NEC puck made for the NEC monitors along with there software will not work on NEC monitors outside the USA you need to buy an EU puck, crazy piece of thought on NEC behalf.
Russ

[Tony]

Thank you all for replying and dissecting the issues. The responses have been very helpful.
Best wishes,

Tony

[Bear]

Not sure how true this holds up in practice though ... my main screen is over 5 years old now and still capable of over 225 cd/m2. In my "other life" as an IT tech, I don't think I've ever thrown one away with a worn-out backlight -- have certainly have a few backlights fail outright - and a few power supplies go - but for the most part they just seem to keep going forever.

I've had about the same experience, Colin, but I keep seeing that warning related to calibrations coming in at low DeltaE numbers, so I guess it is more related to maintaining color accuracy than outright monitor fzzt. My two Eizo CGs are coming up on five years old, always run them at 80-100 cd/m2, and notice a little upward creep on the validation max DeltaE. Would be interesting to know what the affect of running higher brightness would have been....

[Colin Southern]

I've had about the same experience, Colin, but I keep seeing that warning related to calibrations coming in at low DeltaE numbers, so I guess it is more related to maintaining color accuracy than outright monitor fzzt. My two Eizo CGs are coming up on five years old, always run them at 80-100 cd/m2, and notice a little upward creep on the validation max DeltaE. Would be interesting to know what the affect of running higher brightness would have been....

To be honest, I normally don't get too excited about minor variences ... I usually only profile my screens a couple of times a year, or on the odd occasion when I suspect that somethings changed.

Would love to lay my hands on that new 30" Eizo though - about NZD $8000 though

[Bear]

Yeah Colin, it is largely comforting measurbating stuff that won't really affect day-to-day work much, but comforting, nonetheless.

...the 30"... actually measured out the real estate jump from 24" to 30", the price of the real estate, *gulp*. Think when these two CG241Ws give up the ghost, I'd go for the CG245W or the CG275W which I believe are actually better than the CG303W. Hope the world economy takes a great leap forward before then.