Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Background: I calibrate my monitor with an Eye One Display 2 device and use the validation feature before and after calibration. This gives detail and average dE2000 values, which, in simple terms, tells you a numerical value for the out-of-gamut errors of the monitor with respect to the 43 colour patches used for calibration.
At the end of March this year I replaced my failing cheap Chinese LCD monitor with an Eizo 22” wide screen, wide gamut one and, as is my custom, calibrate it every month.

I was very surprised to see how much the average dE2000 value drifted over a month, not what I expected for a “quality” monitor. The values just before re-calibration were not bad; it was the change that concerned me. However, last month I noticed a reduced drift and now this month, the drift is quite small.
I have attached a screen snap of the record graph.
My electronic engineer friends tell me that components get worse with age so the circuitry “settling down” is probably not the reason for the calibration drift improvement. Does anyone know what it might be, the LCD panel perhaps?
Terry.

I have an Eizo S2112W coupled to two Medions, one running XP other running Vista.  Monitor is calibrated each month with a spyder 2express.

The XP varies hardly at all, takes a good eye to see the difference, however, the Vista changes quite a lot!  I put it down to the graphics cards.

Jeff

I had wondered about the graphics card but since all seems to be good now, it's probably something else. My Vista laptop drifts quite a lot during a month, based on the validation numbers. That may well be the on-board graphics processor.

I've never been able to see any differences in colour, only brightness on the laptop where the adjustment is very course.
Terry

Terry and Grumpy,
Terry knows, but I have a strange set up here regarding Vista and XP.
Each is on its own hard drive, and gets called from a dos screen before booting; I select which HD will become the C:, and use that operating system.
Hence, the same video card is operating for either OS I choose.
In the beginning, I had different "looks" to the Qimage running in V as opposed  to XP.... I finally got the courage to profile the monitor in both systems, using Spyder 2 Express also, and the the two Qimage screens are now identical using the same Mon profile for each system.
I didn't really need to profile it twice... just my ignorance.

I would like to get your drift on drift.
I have a Samsung synchmaster 204B, and profiling every SIX months yields no change. The LCDs seem far more solid that my old CRTs.
Opinions?
Fred

Terry,

I use an eye one 2 on my (about 3 year old) NEC LCD monitor and see almost no drift even over 6 months. Usually stays under 1.0. So what you are seeing certainly looks excessive.

I would have thought that there could be some component value changes in the early period of "burning in" a new device, but I would have expected things to have stabilized by now. Especially, as you say, for an Eizo.

Mike S

Hellooo  ???

Terry.

Sorry I fell foul once again of typing a TAB, which causes the message to be sent prematurely :-(


Mike S

How many of you make use of any Validation feature in your calibration software?
My "drift" is based on that but I noticed in the last calibration (yesterday), The adjustments made to RGB gains and brightness were minimal, in fact the percent values changed by 1 in brightness and Blue. Both were minor because the CD/m2 and colour temperature were within spec. - just a fussy operator  ;D
Terry

Don't forget (or be aware) that Microsoft has gotten into the Color Mangement business with Vista and come up with a whole new scheme.  It is, however, generally seen as a better system.

The problem with Vista (and now Windows 7) is even though you use your monitor profile as default, these OS have a tendency to dump it and revert when "not responding" and some other screen refreshes occur.  There are some hacks out there that I have used and been able to stabilize.

XP doesn't have that issue.