Bt1886, gamma22 or gamma26

[Roberto Leone]

What's your favorite gamma and why? I'm curious to know the differences between Bt1886, gamma 22 and gamma26!

 

[Phil Holland]

General rules from the past X amount of years:

Gamma 2.2 - Bright Rooms
Gamma 2.4 - Darker Viewing Environments
Gamma 2.6 - Theatrical

I'll say however I've done a lot, and I can't stress this enough, of detailed research globally. Sometime back Gamma 2.4 became the defacto standard for digital delivery for broadcast and streaming. Generally I'd say you should probably aim at 2.4 unless specified by a client or dealing with a specific display medium.

Gamma 2.4 works very, very well for emissive display technologies and even in home projection.

The lighting conditions pertaining to human variation, i.e. watching a film on a laptop in an airport during the day versus afternoon or evening, shouldn't be enough to deter you from mastering in a specific gamma. Given ideal through semi-ideal conditions, Gamma 2.4 is likely the best solution.

There's other larger questions that echo across the industry now mainly dealing with other variables related to different display technologies, codecs, and HDR mastering. Some have some generally adopted practices and then there's everything else in between. Black point comes to mind as a particularly challenging hurdle for some. Take into account the variables of the screen technologies themselves and the ones that do awful things like crushing darker tones and that gets even trickier.

But yeah, generally Gamma 2.4 will make you happy.

 

[Roberto Leone]

Fantastic, as I expected, I will continue to use Bt1886 wich should be the best compromise!! Thanks a lot!!