Is my monitor failing?

[jlipkin]

I have a 20" Apple Cinema which is about two or three years old (can't honestly remember). When I went to profile it tonight using a Monaco Optix puck, something odd happened which leads me to suspect a problem with either the monitor or the calibration device. After measuring the LCD at max and minimum brightness settings there is a step called measure brightness. You are supposed to adjust the brightness setting until a yellow triangle sits within the green zone. I can't get the monitor dim enough. In other words, I have the monitor set on the lowest brightness setting possible, and the triangle is still just outside the green. In the next step, the software tells me the monitor is now set to its max usable brightness. This seems a bit odd to me. On the next step, optimize brightness for room lighting (which I have set to dim), even with the monitor set to the lowest brightness, the arrow is far outside the zone it should be in.

At the end of the calibration process, it tells me:
Target White Point: Monitor Native
Black Luminance: 0.17 cd/m2
White Luminance: 78.57 cd/m2

I set the gamma to 2.2

If the monitor were failing, shouldn't the opposite be true? Wouldn't the bulbs not be giving off enough light?

[Kiran Thind]

Goto Preferences (in the MonacoOPTIX menu) and change the calibration mode from Normal to Expert. When you click Create Monitor Profile, make sure Calibrate & Profile is selected, and monitor type is set to LCD. Next, you choose the white point and gamma curve targets. I recommend D65 (6500K) and 2.2, respectively. In the next step you will measure the black luminance, white luminance, and color temperature. Measure the color temperature (white). When measuring the white luminance, adjust the brightness until it reads ~125 cd/m^2 (if color temperature reading was close to 6500 K), or ~135-140 (if color temperature was >400 K from 6500 K). Finally, click the right arrow to measure the patches and build the profile. After the profile is built it will display the resulting color temperature, gamma, and white & black luminance. My preferred white luminance is ~120-125. If you end up with a white luminance < 105 or > 140, repeat the calibration & profiling increasing or decreasing brightness (respectively) one step.

Hope this helps,

Kiran

[jlipkin]

Kiran -

I forgot to thank you for the advice. Tried your suggestions, and things worked out fine

regards

Jonathan