Monitor Calibrator Availability and Recommendations

Hey Folks:

I need a decent monitor calibrator and would prefer to buy it locally instead of on Amazon (for reasons of expediency). I have been looking at the X-Rite EODIS2 Eye-One Display 2.

Is this a good calibrator? If so, does anyone know where I can buy one locally at a decent price (around $200)? If not, what would you recommend?

Thanks!

I have one and love it. Not sure where would buy one locally, especially at that price. You can get it for that at Amazon and the shipping is fast, 2-3 days at your door. If you can't find one and need one faster than 2-3 days, just shoot me an email and you can come borrow mine until yours comes in.

Good unit. I dont know of anyplace in town (minus maybe Denver Pro Imaging) that would have the unit. Definitely wnt be at a discount.

If you are also looking at monitors make sure to conside the NEC Spectraview capable units.

RichieV

I bought the Gretag Macbeth version in 2005 (I understand that the current version is the same, just with xrite branding) and liked it a lot.

I should ask what kind of monitor you have though. If you have a wide gamut monitor, the i1 colorimeter won't work right. When I bought my HP LP2475w, I noticed that right away and bought a ColorMunki which is a spectrophotometer. However, the ColorMunki is a lot more expensive than the i1 Display 2. Anyway, bear that in mind if you have a wide gamut monitor.

Don't know where you would get one locally but I have one and it works flawlessly. Highly recommended.

I got lucky and bought mine for like $80 off craigslist a while back... In my opinion it is the best calibrator that I have used and I have owned several. Unfortunately I did a quick check of all the places I buy things (new and used) and I didn't see any available. You are more than welcome to borrow mine for a bit if you don't want to wait until amazon gets one here.

Mikes Camera in Boulder or Denver Pro Photo may have one but that would be the only places I can think of that would have one locally.

Caz, Is this the one?

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0352191

If so, I work at Microcenter and we have one in stock. I work Friday night and Saturday. I might be able to get you employee price one one but not sure how much that would be...retail is $199

Matt,

The issue around the Wide Gamut monitors is only present in none color managed applications. You should have no issues within Photoshop and other color managed applications. The only issues are around viewing websites in a none color managed web browser. The newer versions of Firefox all install with a default setting that only enables color management on tagged images, so if an image was untagged sRGB it will look overly saturated on a wide gamut display. This can easily be resolved by modifying the settings within Firefox to enable color management on every image. My Firefox 3.6.13 uses my calibrated profile for everything on the web and I have no saturation issues of any kind. Indeed the tagged and untagged images all look perfect.

Wow! Great respones guys!

Thanks for all the input, especially regarding the effectiveness of the model - I'm much more comfortable with the decision now.

Jack - That's the exact colorimeter. Call me on my mobile. I'd love to arrange to have you pick it up for me tomorrow so that I could pick it up from you after gallery duty on Saturday.

Koveh - Thanks for the offer of the loan. If I can't get one soon I may take you up on that. And a huge thanks for the info about calibrating Firefox - I had no idea that was possible!

Thanks everyone!

Caz, you can fix your Firefox default by doing the following:

1) Type "about:config" into your browser destination
2) Tell it you will be careful and continue
3) In the filter, type "gfx" to narrow down the criteria
4) Double click gfx.color_management.mode
5) Change the value from 2 to 1. (0 means don't color manage, 1 means always use profile, 2 means only on tagged images)

Your all set.

Thanks Koveh! I'll change those settings shortly after picking up the Eye-One later this evening.

Koveh, you are correct on wide gamut monitors, images that are not viewd in color aware applications will look oversaturated (that applies even to the Windows desktop) but that's not what I was talking about. The problem I was referring to is the problem of trying to calibrate a wide gamut monitor with colorimeter that's designed for sRGB gamuts. Since colorimeters calculate color by measuring the intensity of light though red, green, and blue filters (just like a digital sensor) their perception of color is completely dependent on knowing the color of the filters and that's where the problem arises. The look up tables for the color filters in the i1 Display 2 colorimeters are populated with values based on a standard gamut monitor. To my knowledge, the only colorimeter on the market that has general look up tables for wide gamut monitors is the Spyder 3 Elite. NEC's SpectraView II and Lacie's Blue Eye use the i1 Display 2 puck, but provide different look up tables for the filter values that allow for proper calibration of their wide gamut monitors. Without the proper look up tables for the color filters, it's impossible for an accurate color profile to be generated. In my case, that really manifested itself in my white point. It was nearly impossible for me to calibrate to D65 with my i1. That's why I bought the ColorMunki which instead of being a colorimeter, it's a spectrophotometer, like the professional i1 products. That means that it sees the color of light by reading it's wavelength instead of interpolating the color based on the luminosity measured through the RGB filters.

Now, all that being said, exactly how off is a wide gamut monitor profiled with a regular gamut colorimeter? Probably not that much and certainly less than an uncalibrated monitor. However it was noticeable to me and having an inaccurate monitor profile defeats an entire color managed workflow.