Monitor Choice

[mattyb240]

Firstly.

Thank you to everyone who contributed there opinion on how to select my first camera! I settled on the Canon 1000D and bought an extra lens, with all the accessories I have spent just under £500, and I must say I am very pleased with the results so far, and had some good feedback from friends and family.

I bought my first print the other day in A2 size, I'm very happy with it, but I couldn't help but notice the colour is different then portrayed on my MBP an external monitor. My question is as a beginner an amatuer I want some form of colour accuracy. Is there a good callibration out there for my Penryn MBP?

Or is a better external monitor a better option? I'm not making money on my photos or anything like that, but I would like my pictures to turn out how I see them. I only have a very limited budget.

I was looking at this monitor:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158551

From what I have been reading an IPS monitor is the only real way to go? Is it true they re-produce 16,000,000 colours instead of 260 odd thousand? And would I benefit from this?

I can sell my old 19" monitor for around £65 which would re-coop some money.

Many thanks,

Matt

 

[Edge100]

Does your MBP have a matte screen? If so, it can be calibrated. Glossy screens, AFAIK, cannot be properly calibrated.

No matter what monitor you're using, colour calibration is a must if you want your print colours to match what you're seeing on screen.

EDIT: This is a good, inexpensive option

 

[mattyb240]

Thanks for the link, I'm looking into it now! It does indeed have a matte screen. Does the printer service I used effect it much?:

http://www.photobox.co.uk/

 

[herkyjerky]

That is the same monitor I am looking at getting. I have not heard any negatives yet and it seems to be a good monitor for the price. Is there anyone who has this monitor who could give some feedback?

 

[Edge100]

Thanks for the link, I'm looking into it now! It does indeed have a matte screen. Does the printer service I used effect it much?:

http://www.photobox.co.uk/

Some printers will attempt to correct your colours for you, but I doubt that the printing process, per se, is the cause of what you're describing. Sounds like a classic case of non-calibrated monitors.

Did you use Display Preferences to try an initial calibration? I find Apple's calibration tool is pretty good as a first stab, but for proper calibration, you'll need something like the Spyder.

 

[sreedy]

Thanks for the link, I'm looking into it now! It does indeed have a matte screen. Does the printer service I used effect it much?:

http://www.photobox.co.uk/

I was reading an article in this Months "Digital Camera" and there was a mention of not using photobox and recommending another print service. I'm not sure if this was purely a quality issue or colour matching. I'll take a look at the mag when I get home and post the details.

 

[ChrisA]

I bought my first print the other day in A2 size, I'm very happy with it, but I couldn't help but notice the colour is different then portrayed on my MBP an external monitor. My question is as a beginner an amatuer I want some form of colour accuracy. Is there a good callibration out there for my Penryn MBP?

Or is a better external monitor a better option?

Buy the external monitor if you like but ANY monitor will require calibration. If you care about color you simply can't get around it no matter how much you spend on the external monitor. They ALL need calibration.

Most of the big printers used at the services are very expensive and accurate with built-in self testing and calibration. But they mostly just asume you are sending files in the sRGB color space and don't even look to see if that assumption is true. So as long as you send then sRGB files you will get the right result. But if your screen is "off" and you adjust the picture by eye your adjustmants will be off and you will be sending the printer miss-adjusted files. You must have a calibrated monitor before you can even think about what the printer is doing

So, buy the hardware calibation unit first. There are several at around the $100 price point or just over.

Yes the IPS pannels are better then the cheap ones sold to for office work, games and DVD watching. But the number of color is a function not of the pannel type but the the DAC (digitital to analog converter) the better ones are 8-bits per channel but the DACs built into notebooks and cheap monitors are 6-bit per channel.

 

[mattyb240]

Thanks for those who have posted, I had already done a calibration on my MBP before when I first had it, and if I were to get the external this is what I would do also.

If you could find the details about why not to use photobox I would be interested as I found their service very good.

 

[Ryan1524]

The 2209WA is an IPS panel, a very good choice for photography.

 

[sreedy]

If you could find the details about why not to use photobox I would be interested as I found their service very good.

I've also used them loads for my Compact Digital Camera and agree they have been great, but never used them for serious stuff.

I managed to dig it out eventually from Digital Camera's November 2008 addition, I must have picked it up recently and read that section. It's a letter reply to an article in Septembers edition which I don't have, but I think the letter tells you what I was getting at.

Going Large.
Well done for writing the article on photo labs in September's issue. Previously I have used Photobox, Bonusprint and Jessops but have had poor colour matching results. As a result, I was just about to buy a large-format printer when I read your article. I've now tried Loxley Colour and can report that the service was great and the prints returned in two days. The quality was much better than Photobox and the others. Thanks again for giving me the 'heads up' on Loxley Colour.
Tim Davey, Guildford