Perfect Colours for Creative Minds (1)

By Hermann Groeneveld / SilvergrainClassics

Why Colour Calibration is Essential for Filmmakers and Photographers

The requirements in analogue photography are basically no different for a creative and artistically oriented person. It doesn’t matter whether I use a certain film for particularly natural skin tones, carry out cross development or use black and white or infrared film: In all cases, I want to see what the result currently looks like unaltered after digitisation. This result should either be retained, or it is subjected to a targeted change in the artistic sense. An absolutely precise display on a colour-calibrated monitor is essential. In this article, we provide a rough overview of how colour accuracy works throughout the entire process, from recording to output. For filmmakers and photographers alike. Colour management is the keyword. So it makes sense to take a look at a manufacturer of colour-calibrated monitors from the perspective of creative people and their requirements. EIZO is without doubt the technological spearhead on the market. And, in my many years of experience, a reliable partner through sustainability.

Precise and Unadulterated View of the Image

At the beginning of my research for this article, I asked Christian Ohlig, Senior Manager Product Marketing Graphics at EIZO Europe GmbH in Mönchengladbach, Germany, what I needed to know about EIZO’s premium-class monitors. But specifically from the perspective of hybrid photographers and filmmakers, please. Ohlig’s statement in response was as astounding as it was clear: “From our point of view, it makes no difference how the files were created. It doesn’t matter whether it is a film consisting of 25 or more individual images per second, digitally photographed, drawn, prompted by AI or photographed and scanned in analog. The task and our aspiration is always the same: To guarantee a completely precise and unadulterated view of the pictorial content of the file. Just like when you look at a slide on a light table in the analog sector, for example.”

The Light Table with Defined Colour Temperature as the Measure of all Things

A brief historical review: The company EIZO was founded in 1968. EIZO is – it could hardly be more apt – the Japanese word for ‘image’. The company started out as an OEM manufacturer of black and white TV sets. The company’s further development led to the production of gaming table monitors in video arcades. And finally led to the cathode ray tube screen, when the personal computer began its worldwide triumphal march in the mid-1980s. Initially as an OEM manufacturer, then with its own products for the first time in 1985. If we turn the clock back just 20 years in the history of the development of computer monitors, the question was: Can an LCD monitor do what the analogue process has just transferred to the CRT monitor at great expense and with high acquisition costs for the user? For decades, the light table with a defined colour temperature was the basis for error analysis. Complex corrections by filtering and controlling the film development process were the order of the day. Time-consuming and cost-intensive ‘trial and error’ included. Then came the hour of tube monitors that were already calibrated for colour accuracy. High-end bolides from Barco, for example, were a long time ahead in terms of colour contrast, colour range, brightness and homogeneity of the surfaces.

To be continued