I was cruising Eric Hsu’s site and saw this pic. I jacked it, but I know Eric jacked it from somewhere too. In fact, if I know him as well as I think I know him, he would be proud I jacked it from him. Anyhow, if I was racing in Super GT, I’d be crapping my pants right now. Currently ranked #1 in Super GT is the Autobacs Racing Team Aguri and their Arta NSX. I have a lot of respect for the NSX.. but like I said before, all hail the new King.

Old School

New School

I can picture it now.. its like when my ex-coworker used to go on and on about his Corvette (pre-Z06, whatever that was) and how he could smoke anything and this and that.. and then he turned to me and said, while chuckling, “bet ain’t no import can do that, yuk yuk yuk..”.. so I looked up at the sky for a minute.. scratched my wanna-be goatee and said.. “well, actually.. my friend’s 94 Toyota Supra makes 750 horsepower to the wheels on race gas.. but if you ever catch him on the street, he’s probably not running race gas, in which case he’s probably only making like 650 horsepower to the wheels because he had to turn down the boost”.. it was pure joy to watch his stupid grinning face disintegrate into a look of pure sourness and disgust..

Yeah, that’s what I think of when I imagine the look on the Arta NSX driver’s face when the Nissan Skyline R35 GT-R Racecar rolls out of the semi trailer and fires up the Nissan IRL V8.. I’d pay to be there to photograph it.

If you have time, check out Eric’s other post about wack stuff he saw at SEMA.. if you’ve never met Eric, trust me when I say he writes EXACTLY how he speaks in real life.. typos n’ all

Cars | No Comments »

Reading the photography websites, you come across forums posts from time to time regarding monitor calibration. I never thought too much about it since I figured that the screen on my laptop or desktop didnt seem to be out of calibration. In post-processing pictures from my Canon 30D, I figured if the picture looked good on MY monitor, it’d probably look very very similar to everyone else. WRONG.

I actually purchased a Spyder 2 Express a while back. It’s remained brand new in the box for about 3-4 months. Yeah, I bought it but never used it. That’s how unimportant I thought monitor calibration was.. until this week.

About a week ago, a friend of mine asked me to help put together a web site for a friend’s restaurant (Jack n’ Jill’s Creperie on 3rd and Robertson in Los Angeles). We were discussing various colors and trying out different color schemes. My friend said, “dude, what’s up with the salmon pink?”.. to which I replied, “uh, no bro, its more like a dull pink, your monitor must be screwed up”.. I said ti with such conviction, I convinced him that it was his issue. At work I use an IBM T60 laptop with a 20″ wide Viewsonic as a 2nd screen. The IBM T60 is my main screen. Today, to check how the site would look at higher resolutions, I dragged my Internet Explorer window to the 20″ Viewsonic.. and that’s when I saw it.. the salmon pink background.. in fact, I wouldn’t even call it salmon pink.. it was almost like a flourescent orange. So when I got home from work today, I figured before I grace the internet with any more of my oddly colored photos and images, I better check my monitor calibration.

Spyder 2 Express
I paid about $50 on Amazon a while back.. I wanted the Spyder 2 Pro but I couldn’t justify the additional $100+ for the differences, which, for the record are:

Gamma Choices - Express is Fixed, Pro is Unlimited
Color Temp - Express is Fixed, Pro is Unlimited
RGB PreCal - N/A in Express
Ambient PreceiseLight - N/A in Express
Multiple Monitor Support - N/A in Express (I really wanted this)
Front Projector Calibration - N/A in Express
Custom Response Curve Targeting - N/A in Express
ICC Profile Support - Express has ICC2 only, ICC2 and ICC4 in Pro

Anyhow, after removing the colorimeter from the box and installing the software, everything was pretty simple. After starting it up, it went through a few questions asking about the type of monitor you’re using. It then displayed a picture of the Spyder 2 colorimeter on your screen and told you to position your colorimeter on the screen in that spot. From that point on, you pretty much don’t do anything. It checked the blacks, reds, greens, blues, and grays. It took about 5 minutes. Then it saved a new monitor profile in your WINDOWS/system32/spooler/drivers folder (something like that). Then it showed a montage of photos and a button that you could click to see your “before”. Prior to clicking the “before”, I already noticed the colors were much warmer. It made the monitor look “dimmer”.. not as bright. I was immediately thinking I wouldnt like it. Then I clicked the “before”. Damn, HUGE difference. The “before” was much “brighter”, but everything was more washed out. I clicked back and forth in amazement then decided I should head over to my Flickr to make sure my post-processed pictures didn’t look too crazy. Luckily, they looked OK. But looking at my IE, the top bar is actually gray. It was more silverish/whitish before. Now that I’m getting used to the colors, everything just seems more colorful. Was it worht $50? Hell yeah. Even if I never did any Photoshop work or anything, just looking at stuff online, everything is more vibrant, warm, and colorful.

Anyone thinking that they don’t need monitor calibration, think again. If you’re serious about your images, graphics, or photographs, or just plain want to see things on the internet as they should be, then definitely calibrate your monitor.

Photo Gear, Tech | No Comments »