Professional Calibrations = Overrated!!!

The D7000 is 1080p and 3D capable while your D490 is 720p and is not 3D capable. Also, if you seriously believe a $850 TV will perform as well as a $3400 TV, that's just wishful thinking. Especially since the high-end Samsungs have more advanced picture settings than the entry-level ones, such as 10-pt white balance/gamma and a full 3D CMS.

As far a calibration goes, what exactly did you do to get your 'perfect' picture? Do you even have calibration equipment (meter/software/test pattern disc or other pattern source)? Even if you are incapable of seeing a difference between your TV and you neighbor's, that doesn't mean there isn't a meaningful one.

Best Buy is terrible place to get your TV professionally calibrated but there are many excellent professional independent calibrators to choose from, many who frequent this forum. Just because you can't justify spending more on a TV or on a professional calibration doesn't mean you should try to put down others who do. What is the real purpose of your post and your true agenda? Are you trying to justify your purchase against your neighbor's? Or are you just a troll?

at one time I beleive that you had to have someone come out..back when the HDTV were CRTS, now I think with the information available to users - they can pretty much do this on their own with the right understanding and equipment/software.

I only paid once with an CRT HDTV..after that, never did again..I have to say that I still love the CRT image more than any digital..not that I dont like those but CRT have a natural look to the image

Save that "thousand" and turn your 550 into a 7000.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1339743

Now you can tweak the 10 point grayscale and the Color Management System by eye and really get your TV looking spiffy.

With your approach, which is basically coming in here and telling us that we are scam artists taking money from rubes who don't know any better, you're likely to get a lot of nasty replies. So I'll ask a few questions for you to answer then:

- What did you use to calibrate you display? Just a disc, or instruments and software?
- Since in your other posts, you've said you don't see the purpose of using the grayscale balance controls in the Samsung, so I'm assuming you didn't change this setting at all?
- Did you put your display next to your neighbors display and then view identical content on both?
- Do you know that vision is adaptable, and even experts in the field have to rely on instruments as we can't trust our vision? Are you certain someone can show you a neutral gray, a red gray, and a blue gray, all at different times, and you'll be able to discern the correct one in any lighting?

That should help people better answer your question.

please list the equipment and software you used for your "few tries and changes"...

frankly, your post simply sounds like trolling, but i'll give you the benefit of the doubt, for now...

no. you can't...

but then again, you are a professional... so obviously, you know things the rest of us don't...

hint: you aren't the first, and probably won't be the last, who attempts to make others believe that you are somehow "special"...

While DIY is certainly a valid option, the amount of money you need to spend in terms of hardware and software in order to get professionally quality or near professional quality results is pretty high (often much more than a one-time pro calibration). You'd need an i1Pro or ColorMunki spectro plus a decent colorimeter with good low light sensitivity and probably CalMAN or ChromaPure. You'd also need to spend a lot of time learning how to calibrate before you can get the best results possible with your display/system and calibration equipment.

Basically, you need to invest a lot of money and time into it before you can get comparable results to a professional and you might make mistakes along the way without even realizing it. Even a basic calibration with a setup disc might seem easy to do correctly but 50% of people using those discs don't even get that done correctly (though they certainly think they do). For more advanced parameters of calibration like 10-pt white balance/gamma and CMS adjustment, it's even easier to make mistakes and get good looking graphs/charts but bad looking images.

It's obvious that you know your stuff based on this excerpt from a post you made yesterday....

OK, so when you frame and develop a photograph, you might adjust those levels and colors to be how you want it to look, right? If you have a sunset then you might want to add in a little red to get a certain look to the image. If you've put the time and effort into this, and framed your creation to the point that you have it exactly how you want it to be seen, you would want everyone to see it that way to get the full feel and understanding of it, correct?

If you send that image to someone else to look at, you have no way of knowing if they'll see the image the same way you wanted it to be seen. That is what calibration can accomplish. When watching a movie, you will get to see it as the director and cinematographer intended, including color shifts, contrast, shadows, etc... It's no different than wanting people to see your photos exactly as you originally made them.

Calibration can get the most out of your display, with better dynamic range, shadow details, accurate colors, and a more pleasing overall image. If you don't want that, then it's fine. For most everyone in the forum this isn't about finding a way to charge people for something, but about getting the most out of our equipment, and enjoying a movie as it was intended to be seen.

What you did and what a professional calibration will do is apples and oranges. You tweaked to personal preference while calibration is bringing everything to meet a standard. The people who pay for a professional calibration want their display to meet those standards. When the calibration is complete and they see the before and after calibration charts they get that warm fuzzy feeling inside that their tv is putting out the best picture it is capable of. Can you say that about your tv? I'm not saying that your picture doesn't look good but I know it doesn't meet the standards that we calibrate to and that videophiles want. You just changed the spark plugs without gapping them and setting the timing.

The first sentence quoted there is showing that there's a large difference between what you think a calibration and, and what a calibration actually is. You can start off reading the thread here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1021933 but I'll quote a bit of it:


You are setting your display to what you want it to be. That is what you want, so be fine with that. The goal of a calibration is to have the display be as close to reference as possible. That can not be achieved without equipment and experience as displays don't come setup that way, and every viewing environment is different.

So please don't come in and tell everyone here that "The reason I made this post is not everyone has to do the Professional Calibration like many of you insist we have to do." No one here insists that you have to have it calibrated. If you are happy with how your display looks, then be happy with it. If you want to have a display as close to reference as possible, then you can learn to do it yourself and invest in the equipment, or you can hire someone to do it.

However, neither is WRONG. They are personal preference as to what we each aim to achieve for our own personal enjoyment from our system.

Funny.. You have been a member of the forum since 2007 and this thread you started in the Calibration forum is your 12th post.
What makes you think ANYONE needs their set calibrated?
People are free to do what they like, you are not speaking for anyone but yourself and it seems you are only interested in getting everyone's panties in a bunch.. I.E. Trolling..
You don't want to spend money to have your set calibrated or understand why anyone would want to have it done.. why come into this forum and post if you are not interested.. unless your only purpose was to get attention..
Sad .. very sad..
BTW, does your father know you are using his AVS account?
Enjoy your new TV!

lol

Either he's a troll or he's got his bias light screwed in too tight.

i'm argumentative?

no. you can't trust your eyes.

you may believe what you like... but you are not "calibrated"...

i hope you take a bit more care with your "professional photography"...

again, you ain't the first, and you won't be the last... sadly...

i really wonder why someone comes into a forum dedicated to proper calibration and craps in it...

Buzzard, that quote you pulled is absolutely amazing. Let me try. "Calibration is BS, all you have to do is watch a High Def show instead of a standard show!"

LOL

Remind me never to hire you as a photographer.

Ever seen this famous image?

http://www.planetperplex.com/en/item/checker-shadow/

You go ahead and trust your eyes. I'll trust science.

Human vision is very easily fooled, as is abundantly demonstrated by this site (note especially the 'Colour Perception' section): http://www.echalk.co.uk/amusements/O.../illusions.htm .

I'd say this thread is done. Jack isn't going to change his mind no matter what arguments anyone presents, so I'll save my time and energy for people that want help with their calibrations.

Unfortunately the car analogy just doesn't work here. The fact boils down to if you want an image that is reference quality you typically need a calibration. If you don't care about that and just want an image that is pleasing to you, then just adjust it on your own.

Calibrating on your own is something you can do buy requires a sizable investment in time and money. My gear is finally up to a level I feel is good enough for a full featured calibration (i1Pro, i1displayPro, CalMan, pattern generator) but most users don't want to invest thousands in a setup so they will pay someone to do it for them.

I've tried to come up with a better analogy than the car but I can't find one. It really comes down to personal choice and what you want from a display.

As someone who has a photo & print background let me describe my iterative frustrations before awareness in the digital realm.

In the beginning I took photos in jpg and edited on a 2nd hand (to me at the time, a fairly pricey, but unknowingly entry level business monitor). I got mad every time I was done editing and color correcting to have my prints (at the local discount store) show up so different than what I saw on the screen. Worse yet what I could print on the free printer I got with a camera. I sucked it up and went to a pro lab the results were worse. I was informed that without a doubt what was printed is exactly what was in my files.

So with an engineer's mind I took the problem apart.

Nothing I scanned looked like the original on the screen and nothing on my screen looked lik what was output at home or at the discount store.

Enter many nights of googling.

Eventually I got to the point where my scans, displayed images and at home prints looked roughly the same. Satisfactory to my eyes. Prints at the discount store look presentable.

By this time I was shooting raw on a full frame camera with great glass. I decided to do a photo book of a recent trip. To my horror my book's colors looked 'dead', accurate but lifeless.

Spoke at length with the printer and determined that the color range of my monitor was too limited, my workspace lighting was inadequate and too yellow, my printer's resolution for proofs was too low.

Enter more nights of googling, equipment changes and adds. Now I believe that I can capture an image on camera or scan, manipulate it and proof it with confidence ... At home.

The direct comparison is that the makers of video content had a certain vision in mind, their 'stuff' is akin to something you want want to scan or take a photo of.

To see their 'stuff' the way the creators see it, your settings would have to match theirs. Your white, red, blue, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, black needs to be the same as theirs. Just the same way your photos displayed on your monitor at home uses a standard for the definition of colors that is carried across to the lab for accurate reproduction.

So calibration of a tv (or your monitor, printer, scanner, pro lab imager) is simply getting all devices in a chain to agree on the definition of each reproducable color (amongst other things).

What? No comment on the link I posted? or the link that GeorgeAB posted?

You, sir, are a TROLL.