three identical monitors don't match

[agcohn]

How come I know professional editors and colonists in Hollywood that don't calibrate their monitors every week etc? They calibrate once and leave it for years.

I also know one guy who color graded for star wars films and he said his monitors weren't even calibrated at all because it doesn't matter

Not every type of monitor requires constant calibration, but it is nonsense to say that any professional colorist would leave it for years without calibration.

I worked at Company 3 for 5 years (not as a colorist), and our projectors were calibrated multiple times a week, CRTs were calibrated at least once a week, and Plasma / LCD / Dolby monitors were calibrated every couple of weeks. More often if requested by the Colorists. There was not a single high-end colorist there who wasn't extremely paranoid about the calibration states of their monitors / projectors.

 

[Cary Knoop]

How come I know professional editors and colonists in Hollywood that don't calibrate their monitors every week etc? They calibrate once and leave it for years.

I also know one guy who color graded for star wars films and he said his monitors weren't even calibrated at all because it doesn't matter

Sure you do......

 

[starcentral]

I have three Identical LCD monitors for editing. I have calibrated one monitor to color bars. When I set the other monitor to the same color settings as the calibrated monitor the second monitor doesn't match the first even though they both have the same settings exactly. Why is it slightly different? I also have a third monitor that always shows white backgrounds on reddit etc with a yellow tint to them and the youtube logo is bright redish/pink rather than dark red.

As a minimum get yourself a DataColor Spyer PRO series color calibration kit (the Pro allows unlimited number of calibrations) and you will very quickly be able to match up your monitors or even monitors from different manufacturer and even technologies as I have.

The reason these calibration systems work is very simple: 100% of RED, and 100% of BLUE, and 100% of GREEN makes 100% white! During the calibration process the sensor measures various levels of black, grey, red, green, blue, white, etc.. from your monitor and then creates an monitor profile for your operating system to load and use each time you boot up your machine.

It's that simple and it does work. For the past 4 years I've been using the DataColor Spyder 4 Pro and been able to match a variety of different monitors from different manufacturers, etc.. it even works on iPads apparently although I have never tried.

Agreed but the ColorMunki software/Hardware, and I assume the Spyders IOnes etc etc, will not only calibrate your screen but can match multiple screens on the same MAC/PC. You have to run the calibration on each screen one after the other. It seems to work.

With modern LED panels unless you are buying matched sets from Eizo (and selling the house and children to buy them as everyone has said all monitors are going to have different characteristics. Not a lot, and 98% of the world won't care, but for photo/video editing it does matter.

Also not only should you let them warm up for 30 mins before calibrating they need recalibrating periodically too.... Depending on your environment and what you are doing anything from monthly to weekly, to daily. There are some places where every day the junior has to come in early and turn everything on so that when the others come in 30 mins later they can calibrate over coffee on a daily basis.

I agree. A calibration is an absolute must if you are working in the field of photo or video period. I have some friends producing consistently magenta skewed footage and they don't know to fix it because they don't see it! This is absurd.

Even though monitors have different characteristics, i.e. LED and LCD with various variations (TN, S-IPS, H-IPS, e-IPS and P-IPS), most decent calibration systems will in fact get them to match in color and brightness/contrast - but monitors with better dynamic range or contrast ratios will allow you to see more details in shadowy areas for example and possibly even other tones. So people shouldn't assume a cheap monitor is going to match an "expensive" one just because you "calibrated" them. At best the color, brightness and contrast will match yes but there will still be some subtle differences if you are using completely different technology or quality monitors.

How come I know professional editors and colonists in Hollywood that don't calibrate their monitors every week etc? They calibrate once and leave it for years.

I also know one guy who color graded for star wars films and he said his monitors weren't even calibrated at all because it doesn't matter

Not all monitors have to be calibrated frequently that is correct.. but surely anyone who graded "star wars" was using a monitor calibrated at some point in its existence.

The level of monitors these guys are using are not consumer grade, they are very high end panels.

In general there are three levels (possibly more) when it comes to the calibration process of monitors:

Consumer level calibration systems measure the monitor with a sensor and then create a monitor color profile managed by the computer's operating system. This is not a bad start, it does work, but does have some limitations.

The next level of calibration also involves measuring the monitor with a sensor (something like the x-Rite i1 is very popular with professionals) but here pros use different software such as lightSpace or ColorNavigator to do a very deep analysis of the monitor and create a 3D LUT that can be loaded into the monitor itself, or even an external LUT box in line with the signal from the computer to the monitor (typically via SDI or HDMI for TRUE monitoring of a TV/video broadcast level signal). Higher end consumer monitors (like NEC PA272 and any three digit Eizo series) allow loading of 12 or 14-bit 3D internal lookup tables (LUTs) for calibration. This is better then OS management of color. Some new monitors even have their own sensors built in to manage it's own calibration.

Lastly, monitors like the ones from Flanders Scientific are calibrated at the factory. They do not really need any end-user calibration and if you want to have it calibrated you send it back to them for free calibration and they ship it back. These monitors start at $2500 and go up to $5000 and even more. It's what any high end production is using to monitor on set and what the finishing post houses will have as well.