Is it possible to match an uncalibrated monitors with a calibrated one?

[Justin Quinn]

I keep coming across this issue on-set where clients and producers want me to match different brands, makes and models of uncalibrated field monitors for video village. However, these monitors are always from rental houses and are always out of whack one way or the other. If I get one looking close to my color reference monitor, a Sony PVM 2541 A Series (which is routinely calibrated professionally), then I can't get the other field monitors to match the first one. It doesn't help that often times they are different brands from each other, such as FSi, Panny or TV Logic.

It further complicates things when we're doing multi-cam, with side by side monitors... so I got two different camera at two different angles, responding to the lighting differently, one patched to a FSi, while the other is patched to a TV Logic... both of which come from rental houses... and I'm supposed to match them. Try as I may, I haven't been able to do it.

So far, what I've been doing is simply telling them that they have to view it on my monitor, where I can match things well; but most clients want to sit in the confines of video village, not the DIT station, and I don't blame them.

What should I do? Is it even possible or is it a fool's errand? Also, do I understand calibration correctly to believe that if a monitor is uncalibrated, then the RGB parameters will be unpredictable to the extent that any type of eye-matching to other monitors (calibrated or not) will be a complete waste of time... like a dog chasing its tail?

Any thoughts would be appreciated... Thanks!




Not sure if this thread is in the right section, so if not, I ask the moderator to put it in the right one...

 

[Steve Das]

Fuji...

Fuji...

Yes..it is possible. And Fuji has done it.
Fuji has the 1S-100 aka CCBox and the IS-Mini.
But if you want to match multiple cameras to multiple monitors I think you need both of them.

Fujifilm was demonstrating their new IS-Mini On-Set Preview and Monitor Calibration tool for $1300. It's a small little box, which has HDSDI in and out and HDMI output. It has some really cool functionality when paired with IS100 CCBOX, color corrector, but I'm going to focus on what it does as a stand-alone product. The first thing it does, is work as a monitor calibration tool, which allows you to set up your monitor to show accurate color. This is great because you know that what you are coloring to, is what it will look like when it is displayed on professional equipment, regardless of what you are using. This also means that if you use one of these on each of your monitors, they will all have very similar colorimetry, whether they are professional OLED displays, or consumer LCDs. It also allows you to view Log or Look previews, to a calibrated monitor, and using an iPad interface, you can dial in onset looks. It's a very cool tool and idea, and extremely useful, for both onset monitoring, and for post applications.

Now that there are more cameras capable of shooting LOG or Raw, the art of creating looks or LUTs has become more important than ever. While you can usually rely on the in-camera LUTs, there are many times you need to have more control over the image. The same can be said of using multiple monitors on set and trying to ensure they all match as closely as possible. Fuji has built upon the power of the CCBox and introduced the IS-mini, a powerful color management tool that has multiple uses on and off set. Watch my video above to get a glimpse at what this box is capable of and read Fuji’s full press release for more details. - See more at: http://blog.abelcine.com/2013/04/11...i-color-management-tool/#sthash.Lnt2OzeJ.dpuf

http://www.postmagazine.com/Publica...eptember-1-2013/Review-Fujifilms-IS-Mini.aspx

 

[Andre W.]

You could do old school and pump in color bars with the pluge and calibrate them that way. It ends up being a ball park type closeness but if your looking at different panel types then yes it may be a noticeable difference. I know there was a few years that I had done that, and yeah sometimes the panel is headed south and there isn't much you can do about that. And yes, sometimes the camera itself isn't seeing light the same. So always make sure you start with a neutral source with the colorbars.

Here at Keslow we do go ahead and use a Klein K10 (http://www.kleininstruments.com/colorimeters/k10-a/) meter to be able to calibrate all of our monitors that do offer the ability to calibrate them. Making sure that their luminance values, and chromatic values are in tolerance values for rec. 709. That way we know the monitors are 99% matched to each other (really hard to see the difference when all are calibrated right). We also do this for our clients upon request. However once it leaves our calibration department, if people start going in and adjusting values thats out of our hands. But again if requested we will head out to our supported sets and calibrate their monitors there.

We also do have the IS-MINI's and could go the route of calibrating an IS-MINI for each monitor, however the way that most productions have been using that through us is just to have one IS-MINI per camera, no monitor specific luts loaded, just the camera slog2-rec709 lut, then pump that out to LCD and OLED monitors that have been calibrated.