Laptop screen question

oblivion

oblivion

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I'm probably going to make myself sound a right idiot here. When I'm looking at my pictures on my Samsung laptop, depending on my facial position the screen will either be more contrasty (by lowering my head) or slightly increased exposed (by raising my head).

My screen has been calibrated but again depending on the position of me I could well be editing a picture too much, or too little. Any ideas?
 
I'm afraid that what you are seeing is not at all uncommon and is a trait with cheaper display technology. Fine for web and office type stuff if you're not too fussy, but a real PITA if you care about photography.

The best you can do, short of buying an external monitor or a new laptop is to just make sure you set the angle for the most balanced view across the screen.

I've just spent over £1700 on a laptop (Dell Precision M6700 with IPS RGB display) simply in order to get a display that satisfies my needs. Were it not for the screen quality I could have managed perfectly well with a £1,000 machine. I did actually buy one online recently (Dell XPS 15 L521x), but the display quality was so poor that I was forced to return it.
 
Have to agree with Tim here. I know it's an utter pain but cheaper laptops monitors are no where near as colour reliable as the professional monitors available on the market.

It all depends what your circumstances are, if your a business I'd maybe think about purchasing either an external monitor or new machine. If, on the other hand it's recreational I would basically do as Tim said in the above post.

What screen calibration system do you use?
 
I think the real problem here is viewing angles, not colour as such. Colour you can improve with calibration, if the monitor has adequate gamut and contrast, but viewing angles are a different thing entirely. This is where IPS panel technology shines and TN technology tends not to.

A lot of the more premium tablets and hybrids are now shipping with IPS displays, because they will often be held at angles which otherwise might be sub-optimal. A few laptops also employ IPS in their displays, but not many. IPS addresses the issue of viewing angles, but not colour. In the case of my new laptop it has both an IPS display for broad viewing angles and an RGB LED backlight to cover a rich colour spectrum, which exceeds the Adobe RGB Gamut.
 
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The laptop itself lets me calibrate it and shows me how taking me through steps. I'm aware this is not the best way to achieve correct calibration but its what I have.

My alternative which springs to mind is to connect my laptop to my TV by the HD port and view and adjust from what I see on my tv. Would this be an ideal as my telly has many more colours than the laptop I'm sure, and at 48 inch my pics will look outstanding
 
At the end of the day a TV is a monitor with a tuner and speakers included. If the quality of the display is adequate then I don't see why you shouldn't be able to use it. For years I've been using my 40" Sony TV as a medium for displaying my photos and they look fab. Just be careful that your TV is calibrated and has a nice neutral temperature and no hideous picture "enhancement" features enabled to screw everything up completely.
 
I will give it a go and see how much the two differ.

I should really get one picture printed by normal means. Have the same picture on the laptop and showing on the TV all at the same time so I can see just exactly what differences the outcomes are producing. Come to think of it I could do that later as I have lots of prints in the home to achieve this
 
tdodd said:
I think the real problem here is viewing angles, not colour as such. Colour you can improve with calibration,
Click to expand...

Not with a cheap TN panel like most laptops have. With a TN panel, and some cheaper VA panels you can't separate the issue of colour and viewing angle, because the colour and gamma will change with viewing angle.


tdodd said:
In the case of my new laptop it has both an IPS display for broad viewing angles and an RGB LED backlight to cover a rich colour spectrum, which exceeds the Adobe RGB Gamut.
Click to expand...

Really. What laptop is this? That's a bold claim for a laptop.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Not with a cheap TN panel like most laptops have. With a TN panel, and some cheaper VA panels you can't separate the issue of colour and viewing angle, because the colour and gamma will change with viewing angle.




Really. What laptop is this? That's a bold claim for a laptop.
Click to expand...

He says what it is in post #2
 
Pookeyhead said:
Really. What laptop is this? That's a bold claim for a laptop.
Click to expand...

Detailed owner review here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...79326-dell-precision-m6700-owners-review.html - and gamut analysis here....

Purple triangle = Adobe RGB gamut. Red triangle = gamut of laptop display.

M6700300nits.jpg
 
oblivion said:
The laptop itself lets me calibrate it and shows me how taking me through steps. I'm aware this is not the best way to achieve correct calibration but its what I have.

My alternative which springs to mind is to connect my laptop to my TV by the HD port and view and adjust from what I see on my tv. Would this be an ideal as my telly has many more colours than the laptop I'm sure, and at 48 inch my pics will look outstanding
Click to expand...

I had to do this too. HDMI cable across the floor to 50" tv, the wife loves it!
 
Mightily impressed by that Precision laptop Tim - did you get it from a certain ebay shop? I'm in the market for a Dell XPS M1710 replacement.
 
I bought it from the Dell Outlet as a refurb. I paid £1745 all in, including three years next business day on site warranty. I priced it up as a new machine on the Dell website and inclusive of discounts it would have cost around £3,000 new. It was originally shipped in October and I bought it in November so it was near enough brand new when I got it. A tidy saving indeed. :)

It was to replace an XPS M1710 which is actually still working well with the exception of the fading and yellowing backlight which precipitated my decision to upgrade. Of course the performance boost is very welcome, but the screen was the straw that broke the camel's back. The XPS M1710 was supplied by ecomputers (thechef01) on eBay.

A photo is hardly the best way to demonstrate the improvement, but here are the two laptops side by side with both screens set to max brightness. The colours are much more true to life and the contrast and definition are both more striking in the new machine....

20121218_232515_3889_LR.jpg


With the exposures equalised a little more by shooting each screen separately in Av mode here are the results. Moire is screwing with the image, but the richness of colour and contrast is evident. The old screen looks faded, washed out and almost grey by comparison, and the red apron looks a little orangey.

20121218_232616_3890_LR.jpg

20121218_232626_3891_LR.jpg
 
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I'm in the same boat with the fading backlight on my XPS M1710, I see ecomputers have Dell Precisions on sale as well, will take a look at both sites nice machine Tim - IPS on a laptop!!

But I'll still miss the 1900x1200 screen :razz:

Hmm ecomputers don't provide the IPS panel,
 
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Mad Badger said:
But I'll still miss the 1900x1200 screen :razz:
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I thought I would too, and it sure wouldn't hurt to have it back, but actually I can't say I've been troubled by the missing real estate once I've stopped thinking about it.

Oh, and there are other IPS options out there. Asus seems especially keen on IPS displays and Sony, HP, Lenovo and Apple do produce some models with IPS screens. What sets the Dell apart from many of those is the gamut, thanks to the RGB backlight. If you Google "orangegate" you'll also find that some of those other IPS options struggle with authentic colour as well - but at least they offer good viewing angles.
 
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Thanks Tim, will keep an eye on the Dell Outlet, Precision M6700 out of stock at the moment.
 
There have been quite a few lately, but the IPS RGB display is a lot less common. AFAICT new stock usually gets added at around 15:30 each day, so that's a great time to get busy looking for new additions.

You could also consider the M4600 and M4700 15" options or the M6600, which is Sandy Bridge rather than Ivy Bridge, but will still offer the IPS-RGB display.

It's worth noting that with the IPS panel all video processing is performed in 10 bits and as a result the dedicated GFX card has to be used at all times, thus losing out on Optimus and the extended battery life that might otherwise offer.
 
If you're addressing me I don't print. All my viewing/displaying is on a monitor or TV. On the very rare occasions when I have printed it's with DSCL. Prints looked great. Clients chuffed.
 
tdodd said:
Detailed owner review here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...79326-dell-precision-m6700-owners-review.html - and gamut analysis here....

Purple triangle = Adobe RGB gamut. Red triangle = gamut of laptop display.
Click to expand...


Ahhh... that one. :thumbs:

Mad Badger said:
But I'll still miss the 1900x1200 screen :razz:
Click to expand...



I know what you mean. My monitor is packed in it's box awaiting collection and replacement under warranty from Eizo at the moment. I'm currently n my wife's 1920x1200 screen and I find THAT painful.... I'm used to 2560x1600... it's amazing what you get used to, and once you go big, there's no going back.
 
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tdodd said:
thus losing out on Optimus and the extended battery life that might otherwise offer.
Click to expand...

The next laptop i get will certainly NOT have NVIDIA optimus. It plays absolute havoc with colour calibration more often than not resetting the profile on random events and needing to manually reapply. Plenty of people having similar issues with it.
Its a nightmare - when editing i have to manually apply the profile AND keep checking it as i go through!

I also seriously doubt a TV has better colour and accurate rendition than a monitor - quite simply they're not designed to. They're designed for high contrast, high impact, often vivid rendition to get that impact factor.

Comparing 2 laptop screens side by side on "max brightness" isnt that accurate either - you need a calibration device on there and set the brightness up so that the candela figures match. Only then are you comparing like with like.
 
As unscientific as this comparison might be, here is my uncalibrated TV vs my uncalibrated M6700 set to sRGB and full brightness....

20121219_151239_3892_LR.jpg


Unfortunately moire has again screwed up the impression given by the TV, but colour and contrast can hopefully be roughly compared. There are some differences there for sure, but not to the extent that either one could not be used at a push. I expect running calibration software would close the gap.
 
Well I plugged my laptop by the HDMI port and got my best picture ready. Such a difference in colour and contrast on the TV. I went through my tv menu setting for picture quality, oh my god it has so many options to chose from. I'm confused now as to which one to choose on the TV. Do I set it to factory settings or choose natural or warm vivid colours. I turned off the feature that the colour temp changes depending on the light in the room too. How do I calibrate a tv? By the way my laptop screen does not show entirely on the TV, but annoyingly cuts off the sidebars and top and bottom bars. I could not see anywhere on how to correct this
 
gnirtS said:
Looks to be a severe lack of shadow detail on that TV compared to the monitor (especially through the door on the left).

"full brightness" really isnt any yardstick. Ive seen screens range from 120 to 190 candela on max brightness - a difference of several magnitudes light wise!
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing that out. I had not noticed. I've now tweaked the TV display for the PC input and now have this....

20121219_162052_3893_LR.jpg


I thought I'd try a few others for comparison with different colours and tones. This is all by eyeballing the screens, using the new Dell as the baseline, and not using a calibration tool...

20121219_162305_3894_LR.jpg


20121219_162344_3895_LR.jpg


20121219_162816_3896_LR.jpg


For non-professional use I think the TV is doing a pretty decent job. Unfortunately the process of taking a photograph of the screens and running it through Lightroom has contributed its own influence on colour and contrast, so the photos here need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Certainly the blacks are too dark as rendered above. In real life the shadow detail is much more clearly visible. The proof of the pudding is in what the eye sees, and I'm happy with what I have in the real world - as oppposed to a photo displayed on a monitor, then photographed again and displayed on an entirely different monitor which may or may not be set up correctly.


oblivion said:
Well I plugged my laptop by the HDMI port and got my best picture ready. Such a difference in colour and contrast on the TV. I went through my tv menu setting for picture quality, oh my god it has so many options to chose from. I'm confused now as to which one to choose on the TV. Do I set it to factory settings or choose natural or warm vivid colours. I turned off the feature that the colour temp changes depending on the light in the room too. How do I calibrate a tv? By the way my laptop screen does not show entirely on the TV, but annoyingly cuts off the sidebars and top and bottom bars. I could not see anywhere on how to correct this
Click to expand...

Depends which model TV you have. Mine is a Sony and it has options to cover most things. Regarding the display being cropped, I have a setting called "Display Area", which I have set to "Full Pixel". This gives me 1:1 pixel rendering and no loss at the edges. As for everything else, impossible to say. I started out having everything kind of flattened out, with no fancy processing or enhancements. Then it was a matter of setting black and white points (brightness and contrast) and then refining gamma and other settings including white balance, RGB gain etc. until it seemed to hit the sweet spot all round.
 
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My tv is a Phillips 48 inch. One of the first HD ready tellies. I can control the picture manually but then surely the outcome would be what looks good to me? But I need to establish whether the picture I'm looking at will look the same when its printed. This is what's confusing me. Like I previously said I think the only way this will be possible is to literally hold up a photo I have had printed, have my laptop connected to the TV. Manually calibrate the tv as close to the real picture as possible and also at the same time I could change my laptop too. After all I use the same shop to print my photos so this is the most logical solution to me. No doubt I could take the same picture to another store and the colour difference on their printers would differ slightly. Does this sound like a reasonable solution?
 
The right answer is almost certainly to use a colorimeter to calibrate your TV to your laptop properly. You should disable any dynamic adjustments the TV might try to make on that input port - like dynamic backlighting for an increased dynamic range or a dynamic backlight to respond to changing ambient light. You need the TV settings locked down so once calibrated nothing will change unless you want it to. Before you try any tweaks I would make sure that any calibration performed so far on the laptop (which will be for its internal display) are reset to default. Then make sure there are no enhancements enabled there, such as "Vibrance" or anything along those lines.

In the absence of a calibration tool there are websites and test images which will try to help you to manually calibrate your screen. Here's one such site - http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ - and another - http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/MONCAL/CALIBRATE.HTM.
 
Mad Badger said:
Thanks Tim, will keep an eye on the Dell Outlet, Precision M6700 out of stock at the moment.
Click to expand...

I've been checking too. There are a couple of M6700s at the moment, but nothing at all with the IPS RGB display.

I also had a gander at the ecomputers stock in eBay. Talking this example....

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Prec...t=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item43b6f7d98c

It has the same CPU, GFX, HDD and DVDRW as my machine and includes 32GB of 1600MHz RAM vs the 16GB of 1866MHz RAM that I have. But it does not have the IPS RGB display or the 256GB mSATA SDD that my machine has. WiFi is a step lower in spec too. It costs £150 more than my machine cost.

On that basis I'd be steered more towards the Outlet for a bargain rather than eBay, but pay close attention to pricing. I've seen some very oddball prices on some machines. Don't assume that all the machines are well priced.
 
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