Digital BW, The Print

On Jul 7, 2009, at 3:25 PM, Peter De Smidt wrote:

> It's certainly worth checking out.  I have the Datacolor print  
> spectro,
> and I've made color profiles with it, and generally I've been pleased.
> However, I recently started reading patches for making QTR curves,  
> and I
> noticed that the spectro gives very inconsistent readings of the same
> patch.  Right after calibrating, the first measurement is way off.
> After a few measurements it gets more precise, but it still varies way
> more than any of my densitometers.  With color profiles, it's possible
> that the huge number of patches helps out with this, but with  
> reading 21
> step strips, it's quite annoying, and not very confidence inspiring.

Where absolute accuracy is needed, always warm the device up by taking  
a couple of throwaway measurements, then moving right into your real  
measurements. But keep in mind that a spectro can only emulate  
density, and the end every one is obsessed with (black) is the end  
where spectros have the least leverage. High D-max black measurements  
will always be an approximation, and show wider variance than other  
readings.

C. David Tobie
Global Product Technology Manager
Digital Imaging & Home Theater
CDTobie@...


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Datacolor
www.datacolor.com/Spyder3



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