Monitor calibration - brightness?

What's a good brightness target for my monitor during calibration? I was having some issues with prints coming out dark and checked my monitor calibration to see if that was the issue (I have a Sypder 4 Pro). It told me the monitor brightness was 71 cd/m^2. I know someone mentioned on here before what a good monitor brightness was but heck if I can find it.

thanks

71 should be very good. It sounds like your surrounding light is too dim?

Proper Spyder instructions here: http://www.damiensymon​ds.com.au/calibration.​html (Datacolor's ones leave a bit to be desired).

There seems to be a pretty wide range of suggested brightness settings, so I myself wouldn't stick with one one "standard", either from a calibrater or another user.

Instead, sure, first get a "starting point" from one of those sources or from my "rule of thumb": with new equipment, crank the monitor Brightness down to where you can barely stand using it in your ambient lighting, both in brightness and in color rendition (photos).

Then the "acid test": you need prints! And to compare, you need to view those prints in "appropriate" lighting (something similar to "neutral" daylight without direct sun) and have your monitor in your "working space" ambient lighting. For photo editing, this ambient lighting is typically dimmer than "daylight" lighting.

So many folks use a "dedicated" light for viewing photos, both with proper illumination and with a decent neutral White Balance.

The point being, if you want your prints to "size up", it takes some effort!!

i calibrate in the dark, i work in teh dark too.

I want my monitor the brightest light source in the room.

I use an X-Rite colormunki and I can't set my monitor low enough to what the calibration software desires.

Yeah, gee, who needs eyesight in their old age anyway? They'll have bionic eyes or some **** by then, right?

I use 140 cd/m2 (I think that's the units)...its an acceptably low brightness for print and good for all the other usages I use my computer for.

A brightness of 71 (cdm2) sounds very low. And a brightness of 140 sounds very high. But of course, if you view prints in very low or very high light they may be OK.

Here's a trick to "match" monitor viewing to print viewing.

Use your camera. Using Aperature priority, set ISO to 400, Aperature to 5.6. Set manual focus to infinity (blured out). Put a blank white screen on your monitor and a blank sheet of white paper in your print viewing light.

Point your camera at the white monitor and meter. The shutter speed is a good approximation of the brightness in CDM2 units. So, if your shutter speed reads 1/80 your monitor brightness is 80 cdm2. Some monitors are "polarized", so rotate your camera from horizontal to vertical and take the highest reading.

Do the same for the white paper under print viewing light. Should be close to the monitor brightness for a fair print to monitor match.

I edit in a darkened room with monitor brightness at 90 cdm2. Prints are still a little darker when viewed under a bank of 3 100 watt bulbs at 3 feet (a pool table light).

Most monitor calibration hardware has trouble setting calibrations outside a range of 90 to 130. They will calibrate, but look at the accuracy measurements (Delta-E) and you will see them go outside recommended limits when the monitor brightness is lower than 90 or greater than 120.

Of course, higher quality monitors and calibrators may increase that range.

Redcrown wrote in post #17406262
I edit in a darkened room with monitor brightness at 90 cdm2. Prints are still a little darker when viewed under a bank of 3 100 watt bulbs at 3 feet (a pool table light)..

OK..... Maybe a dumb question. If your prints come out dark doesn't that say that you need to lower the brightness of the monitor to compensate?

My monitor at 90 cdm2 is as low as I care to go. It's a NEC 2490 with Spectraview. When I calibrate below 90, the Spectraview software tells me my Delta-E is going south. Forgot to mention in previous post that my "pool table" print viewing light measures about 100 using the camera trick. So 90 monitor and 100 print viewing is as close as I can get.

Yes, it could be better. But remember that the whole business of profiling is an inexact endeavor. Carefully edited images end up displayed on a wide range of monitors. Cell phones, laptops, tablets, desktops... few, if any are properly adjusted. Prints end up on walls or desks in homes and offices, under all kinds of lighting conditions, mostly poor.

None of my work ends up on gallery walls, under special lighting, selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars. If it was, I'd try harder. Only when I'm making a very special print, like for a competition, do I really worry about it. I only do that once a year and I do hard proofing. I make a print, put it on display, and study it for 2 or 3 days. Sometimes I decide to re-edit and re-print, but not often.

Damo77 wrote in post #17398706
71 should be very good. It sounds like your surrounding light is too dim?

Proper Spyder instructions here: http://www.damiensymon​ds.com.au/calibration.​html (Datacolor's ones leave a bit to be desired).

Thank you for that link! I was FINALLY able to match my white point/color balance between my two cheap ASUS VS239H-P IPS displays!

You're welcome.

on the color munki display site it says 120cm......i have not printed yet commercially

cleyvosier wrote in post #17408369
on the color munki display site it says 120cm......i have not printed yet commercially

Yeah, ignore that. It's always too high.

so what do i set it on

cleyvosier wrote in post #17414188
so what do i set it on

Calibration instructions: http://www.damiensymon​ds.com.au/calibration.​html