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U2410 Calibrator

R

Rift

n00b
Joined
Dec 26, 2011
Messages
3
Hey all so I have ended up purchasing 2 dell u2410's and of course I'm in need of calibrating them. However I'm unsure of which route to go as there seems to be some conflicting information regarding wide gamut monitors.

In either case seems like a lot of people who have purchased recently are using spyder 3 pros. I'm wondering if there is any advantage to springing for the 4?

Also is there any advantage to getting coloreyes display software over what the spyder would come with?

I'm totally new at this so any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
Well I'd recommend an X-Rite i1Display Pro (listed as EODIS3 sometimes) and that is indeed what I have. My research lead me to believe it is one of the fastest and most accurate low cost calibrator pucks. I can't compare it directly to a Spyder, I don't own one, but I can say I'm very happy with it and it gvies good results.
 
Same boat here. I have Spyder4Pro, it has wide gamut support and gives fairly good results. But, unfortunately, I have a standard 8-bit DVI connection and I get heavily banded gradients after calibration. Long story short, you need a 10-bit DisplatPort connection in order to calibrate this monitor properly.

As for the software, I have tried the native Spyder4Pro soft and it was OK, but nowhere as powerful as Argyll CMS with dispcalGUI. This combo gives you the best control over the calibrating device.
 
The xRite i1 Display 3 is much better than the datacolor meters.

I work for Spectracal (www.spectracal.com) and seen some data on the meters compared to our Lab equipement. The spyder meters have issues, I'd stay away.

As far as banding goes. 8bits really isn't enough not to have banding, It's not the monitors fault, it does a great job. You just didn't notice banding on CRTs because they couldn't adjust the guns fast enough so the smudged into each other.

I've got one of the u2410s on my desk, I get the best results using sRGB mode and calibrating the white point in the service menu. If you want wide gamut for adobe RGB mode, then you can just use the native custome mode and adjust the white balance in the user menu.
 
obiwansotti said:
The xRite i1 Display 3 is much better than the datacolor meters.

I work for Spectracal (www.spectracal.com) and seen some data on the meters compared to our Lab equipement. The spyder meters have issues, I'd stay away.

As far as banding goes. 8bits really isn't enough not to have banding, It's not the monitors fault, it does a great job. You just didn't notice banding on CRTs because they couldn't adjust the guns fast enough so the smudged into each other.

I've got one of the u2410s on my desk, I get the best results using sRGB mode and calibrating the white point in the service menu. If you want wide gamut for adobe RGB mode, then you can just use the native custome mode and adjust the white balance in the user menu.
Click to expand...

Hi, i have a Spyder 4 and i always wondered what accuracy you can expect from the Spyder 4. Do have any more detailed info? Thanks in advance :)
 
Accuracy is not bad when the meter has enough light.

But as the amount of light drops off (probably around 40% on most monitors) the spyders start to have a funky non-linear response. The i1 Display 3's track with our big high end gear (CS-2000) but the spyder4 I believe under report the luminance, and the darker it gets the further off the spyder is.

The spyder4 is better than the spyder3 and a spyder3 is probably better than an x-rite i1 Display2 (maybe), but the i1 Display3 is just a much better meter than any of those and it's not even close.
 
obiwansotti said:
As far as banding goes. 8bits really isn't enough not to have banding, It's not the monitors fault, it does a great job.
Click to expand...

It would do a lot better job if it had hardware LUT, no?

I really hope my new GTX 680 will help with those terrible gradients. If everything goes peachy, I might think about switching to a better calibrator (like i1Display Pro) sometime in future. Otherwise, I'll ditch the monitor. It already cost me too much time and nerves.
 
Thanks for the info. To get the best results with the Spyder 4 should i calibrate the monotor with high brightness level and after the calibration lower the brightness to a tolerable level? or does it matter at all what brightness level i use?
 
i1Display Pro and i1Display 3 is same thing, right?
 
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Goodcoin said:
It would do a lot better job if it had hardware LUT, no?

I really hope my new GTX 680 will help with those terrible gradients. If everything goes peachy, I might think about switching to a better calibrator (like i1Display Pro) sometime in future. Otherwise, I'll ditch the monitor. It already cost me too much time and nerves.
Click to expand...

The u2410 does have a basic hardware LUT, it's just not exposed in anyway to make it adjustable. I know some early u2410s had gradient issues and also if you use the hardware CMS controls you can get issues. But both native gamut and sRGB don't seem to introduce any banding for me.

I've had a chance to play with an EIZO CG245W for a couple weeks. It was the best monitor I've ever seen, but if you put up a ramp you'd see banding. Everything in windows is 8bit per channel, and when 8bits isn't enough, nothing will fix it.
 
stefanp67 said:
Thanks for the info. To get the best results with the Spyder 4 should i calibrate the monotor with high brightness level and after the calibration lower the brightness to a tolerable level? or does it matter at all what brightness level i use?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about it, changing your brightness is likely to introduce issues as well. Calibrate it the way you want to use it.
 
Goodcoin said:
i1Display Pro and i1Display 3 is same thing, right?
Click to expand...

Ya. The official name form X-Rite is the i1Display Pro but many people call it the i1Display 3 since it is the successor to the i1Display 2.
 
I'm hoping I don't run into the banding issue since I'm still using DVI (waiting for later this year to upgrade the whole system). My monitors rev is A07 if that tells anyone something.

It sounds like the i1displday is the way to go, so here is my question how is the software for that unit anything special that would need to be known?
 
Rift said:
I'm hoping I don't run into the banding issue since I'm still using DVI (waiting for later this year to upgrade the whole system). My monitors rev is A07 if that tells anyone something.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, hardware changes were made only in A01 and A02 revisions. All the later revisions have introduced purely "cosmetic" changes at OSD level, nothing really useful.

You will most certainly run into banding issues if the gamma curve is changed even slightly during calibration, and that's pretty much unavoidable. The smooth gradients your monitor is able to render natively will be degraded during calibration, because the LUT adjustments will be carried at video card's level, not monitor's (as this monitor does not provide means for hardware calibration).

I'm not an expert in this area, but as I've learned in the process, the video card has to have at least 10-bit internal LUT + 10-bit connection in order to produce 1024 steps in gradients. 8-bit will give you only 255 steps. Hence the banding.
 
obiwansotti said:
I wouldn't worry about it, changing your brightness is likely to introduce issues as well. Calibrate it the way you want to use it.
Click to expand...

I think i was very lucky with my Spyder 4, there's no tint at all that i can detect with my eyes and all colors look visually correct. Sometimes when i look at nature/landscape pictures i just have to go ooohhh my god ... :D, even games and movies are a feast for the eyes :D. The only drawback is when i look at gradients i can see a very faint banding but it is so faint i have to really look for it to see it.
 
stefanp67 said:
I think i was very lucky with my Spyder 4, there's no tint at all that i can detect with my eyes and all colors look visually correct. Sometimes when i look at nature/landscape pictures i just have to go ooohhh my god ... :D, even games and movies are a feast for the eyes :D. The only drawback is when i look at gradients i can see a very faint banding but it is so faint i have to really look for it to see it.
Click to expand...

The issue isn't in the chromaticity get off, it's that the luminance is off. So your gamma curve isn't exactly what you think it is. Also the luminance response plays a big role in saturation for all the colors between white and the fully saturated colors.
 
obiwansotti said:
Accuracy is not bad when the meter has enough light.

But as the amount of light drops off (probably around 40% on most monitors) the spyders start to have a funky non-linear response. The i1 Display 3's track with our big high end gear (CS-2000) but the spyder4 I believe under report the luminance, and the darker it gets the further off the spyder is.

The spyder4 is better than the spyder3 and a spyder3 is probably better than an x-rite i1 Display2 (maybe), but the i1 Display3 is just a much better meter than any of those and it's not even close.
Click to expand...

My spyder 3 pro was not able to calibrate my 2407HC. I dont believe the sypder 3 hardware is wide gamut friendly. The spyder 4 supports wide gamut.

In terms of sensor accuracy, the spyder 3 is by far the worst with spyder 4 being a bit better. The i1 Display 2 is better then the spyder 4, and the i1 Display pro is by far the best colormeter in the under $500 sensors.

The xrite display sensors do a quick recalibration every time you use it, so it can zero in on the readings. spyder sensors have no way to calibrate the sensor, and the chemical filter drifts pretty fast over a year or two.
 
af22 said:
In terms of sensor accuracy, the spyder 3 is by far the worst with spyder 4 being a bit better. The i1 Display 2 is better then the spyder 4, and the i1 Display pro is by far the best colormeter in the under $500 sensors.
Click to expand...

i1 Display 2s are pretty wobbly for accuracy, they only come from the factory with a CRT table and an LCD table. I would likely take a spyder 4 over a i1 Dispaly2.

af22 said:
The xrite display sensors do a quick recalibration every time you use it, so it can zero in on the readings. spyder sensors have no way to calibrate the sensor, and the chemical filter drifts pretty fast over a year or two.
Click to expand...
While you are correct that the filters drift pretty fast, meters don't calibrate themselves. The i1 Display 2 is probably the most notorious meter for drifting quickly. The init call on the i1 DIsplay2 is a result of it sharing an SDK with the i1 Pro which does require a dark offset. The dark offset is just to set the noise floor for the sensors they can tell the difference between sensor noise and actual signal. But the i1 Display 2 doesn't do a dark offset, the init call in the SDK doesn't really do anything.

Bottom line you're absolutely right that the i1 Display Pro is the best of the bunch for meters under $1000.
 
do you think the quality control on the spyder 4's are better? I remember with the spyder 3's, almost every other sensor was poor from the factory.
 
af22 said:
do you think the quality control on the spyder 4's are better? I remember with the spyder 3's, almost every other sensor was poor from the factory.
Click to expand...

Yes, and the spyder 3's got better with time. But they still aren't up to the i1D3, xrite is calibrating every one of those, where the spyders are calibrated in batches.
 
obiwansotti said:
The issue isn't in the chromaticity get off, it's that the luminance is off. So your gamma curve isn't exactly what you think it is. Also the luminance response plays a big role in saturation for all the colors between white and the fully saturated colors.
Click to expand...

I tried the "squinting eye" gamma tests at http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gamma_calibration.php, http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html and http://www.colorserver.net/articles/info_fs595_calibration.htm and the gamma tests on those sites seems to match the Spyder 4 readings:

Gamma Mode 1: Spyder 4 says 2.0, "squinting eye" gamma tests says around 2.0
Gamma mode 2: Spyder 4 says 2.2, "squinting eye" gamma tests says around 2.2
Gamma mode 3: Spyder 4 says 2.35, "squinting eye" gamma tests says around 2.3-2.4

I also measured the brightness settings with the Spyder 4 and got:



And heres the brightness measurements from http://samsungs24a850dw.blogspot.se/



Compared to the blogspot measurements the Spyder 4 seems a little off on the black and white level, 20 lux off in low brightness settings and 40 lux off on higher brightness settings.

Does anyone know of any "squinting eye" tests for color temp or luminance?
 
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