Spyder 5 with DisplayCAL

[tintin82]

Hi folks. Hoping someone can help out with a few questions regarding a newly purchased Spyder 5 that I am getting to grips with. I purchased the Express version as I couldn't justify nearly double the price for a few more settings as I use my PC for gaming, not Pro photo stuff.

I purchased it to correct my Dell s2716dg which has terrible out of the box settings. It has done an admirable job for sure, the colours and gamma now look excellent with a reported 98% sRGB.

A number of questions however.

When running the calibration with the bundled software it takes 5 mins and the results look near identical to the results of running the DisplayCAL software which takes 1.5 hrs. What gives? Can I make the DisplayCAL software run faster?

The DisplayCal software seems very comprehensive and a bit overwhelming to be honest. I am looking for a way to determine the state of my uncalibrated screen to compare to calibrated (out of interest). When I run the 'report on calibrated display' it throws up a lot of info that means very little to me. Where can I find a simple gamma and sRGB comparison?

And last question. Do I need to hold on to this hardware for re calibration later. I read somewhere about colors drifting? Is this significant? Has anyone recalibrated months down the line to find the screen had drifted significantly?

Thanks for all the help.

 

[eddiew]

You can certainly tell DisplayCal to run faster, yes. There's a setting (I think in the Calibration tab) for speed - turn it to fastest. Slower will technically be more accurate though. Let it run overnight or while you're out at work some time.

What it WILL do above the bundled software is get around the limitation of 1-monitor that cheaper Spyders come with (it turns out this is a license issue and utter, utter BS that you have to pay an extra £50 to use it on multiple screens).

I would absolutely hold onto it now you have it, since different graphics cards will require different settings, so the moment you touch anything in your setup you're going to knock it out of calibration. And of course, it's only software settings, and as such at the whims of fate...