Spyder 3 Calibrator

[conkeroo]

I just bought the Spyder 3 today and calibrated my monitor. Now the contrast isnt great, its an old monitor, but I thought I would have at least got a decent profile, colour wise, but everything on screen looks too warm. Has anyone had any experience with the spyder 2 or 3 and if so, what did they think of the results?

[John_T]

6500K looks a lot warmer than what you may previously have been used to, but it would be the correct white point. Look at your images in Photoshop and they should be correct.

As for the monitor, if it is a CRT 4-5 years old, it's over the hill. Phosphors slowly burning out reduces the sharpness as well as the ability to display colors correctly. Between your expectations and the effect of the calibration it may have made your monitor look subjectively worse. Try calibrating it yet again and see if you can eak a bit more out of it, but if the monitor has been used steadily for over five years, bite the bullet and look for a good new one... my 2 centavos

[Dusty]

I agree with John T, I upgraded recently to a Dell 2408WFP from a Diamond View CRT.
The old monitor is now my second screen and I can see a huge difference on the new one.
Calibrated both using the Spyder 2 Pro, it's great, colours on the new monitor are accurate and vivid.
The WP is set to 6500K on both but the old monitor is really looking tired and dull, it'll be going to the scrap heap soon.

[Quad]

When you first see a calibrated monitor it often looks dim and dull but you are going for an accurate standard rather than flashy eye grabbing results. The idea is to set up a system that you can use to preview a print in some sort approximation. It is still a backlit system rather than a reflected system but your eye gets used to it.

I used a spyder 2 but switched to an eye one only because of DDC/CI support with my monitor. The spyder worked well enough.

The big test is to see how it compares to a print when the photo editor is set to preview your printer/paper.

[conkeroo]

The monitor is a flat panel but ive since calibrated a new laptop and the same thing, it looks too warm. I guess its just that I have to get used to it because even today, its lookin more natural than yesterday. I just didnt realise how cool the display was! Thanks all.

[Az2Africa]

It's normal. I thought the same thing the first time I calibrated.

[James Salenger]

I use the Spyder 2 to calibrate my Samsung 906bw. The result is a very accurate
approximation of the prints produced on a Kodak photo printer at Wal-Mart with
no printer processing. I too thought the screen was warm and a little dark but I
was just used to the monitor being formatted for Internet.

[jasonlitka]

I agree with John T, I upgraded recently to a Dell 2408WFP from a Diamond View CRT.
The old monitor is now my second screen and I can see a huge difference on the new one.
Calibrated both using the Spyder 2 Pro, it's great, colours on the new monitor are accurate and vivid.
The WP is set to 6500K on both but the old monitor is really looking tired and dull, it'll be going to the scrap heap soon.

The spyder 2 doesn't work correctly with wide-gamut monitors. Your calibration may not be as accurate as you think.

[Dusty]

The spyder 2 doesn't work correctly with wide-gamut monitors. Your calibration may not be as accurate as you think.
hmm interesting, I didn't know that.
So would a spyder 3 be better suited, will it make a great difference?

[jasonlitka]

hmm interesting, I didn't know that.
So would a spyder 3 be better suited, will it make a great difference?

All I know is that Datacolor says that the "3" models are the first designed to work with wide-gamut LCD monitors. If you've printed something after calibrating with a "2" and it matches your monitor then I wouldn't worry about it. If it doesn't match, an upgrade may be in order.