S95 LCD versus Computer Monitor: Color Vividness

[Nathan]

It's been a while since I've returned to point and shoot, but I just got my wife an S95 for her own shooting. She seems to love it. However, she notices that the colors on her monitor are much more washed out and less appealing than what she sees on the LCD. Is there anything that can be done about this?

I used my Spyder2 to calibrate her Thinkpad laptop, running Windows 7. I haven't used Windows in so long, as well, for photographic purposes. Right now, she's just using ZoomBrowser and Canon DPP.

Hoping to get the monitor to match what she sees on her LCD... think she'll think that others will see the same when she emails them photos. I know that might not be true, depending on their monitor's calibration or lack thereof... but I'm okay with that :p

[Jon]

Unfortunately, what shows on the camera's screen is generally less-representative of what's captured than what you get on the computer screen. The camera screen's optimized as much as possible to let you view it outdoors in fairly bright conditions, so it'll show with increased contrast and brightness, just to overpower the ambient light levels. And that holds true for pretty much any camera I've seen. If she finds the colours washed out, you might try setting the "Colors" to "Vibrant".

[Nathan]

I'll have to see if that setting exists on her Thinkpad/Lenovo LCD. Thanks.

[Jon]

That's a camera setting, not a computer setting. It'll give you more "Vivid" photos to start with. I suspect that the camera's LCD circuitry may apply a similar processing to anything it displays, regardless of what the file is actually saved as.

[Nathan]

I'll try that tonight and see how it turns out. Thanks for the advice. I'm also going to take a gander of the files saved on my computer and see how they look.

[Sdiver2489]

Laptop LCDs are horrible. I would trust the screen on the back of a nice camera more than a laptop LCD. If you want to see your pictures correctly, use a better external monitor.

[spamster]

Thinkpad LCDs are horrible. Colors suck on those things. I'm sure it's calibrated correctly but everything looks really dry and washed out on Thinkpad displays (my brother owns one). If she's just viewing them I'm sure it looks better than the monitor portrays. If she's editing, might want to do it on a PC/laptop with a better display or get a Macbook.