It's been a while. I hope you're all doing well this holiday season.
Here it is:
The studio I work in edits photos on LaCie 324 displays, tethered to iMacs and Apple towers. All the LaCie's save for one are fine, though the one in question is doing something weird.
As you navigate from one image to the next, the enlargement quickly shifts from the 'correct' contrast levels to a very hazy, low contrast version. Blacks appear as a soft charcoal (think FM background). Immediately after, the blacks are rich again.
The photographers all have similar presets loaded (but do make specific adjustments based on lighting, figure, etc.). However, the photographer at this particular station claims he hasn't done anything out of the ordinary today. The machine has also been restarted.
All displays, Apple ands LaCie were calibrated last week with X-Rite's colormunki photo, and all have exact luminance targets. All camera bodies are set to Adobe1998, as is each copy of Capture One.
Any thoughts? Is the display on it's way out? All of the LaCie's are approximately 2 years old.
Skarkowtsky wrote:
As you navigate from one image to the next, the enlargement quickly shifts from the 'correct' contrast levels to a very hazy, low contrast version. Blacks appear as a soft charcoal (think FM background). Immediately after, the blacks are rich again.
Judging by your description, I'll guess the monitor in question is connected to an older or lower-spec system (or perhaps one with an overfull hard drive). C1 takes a moment to move from a quick preview to a fully-rendered version, and it's longer and more jarring when the machine can't churn through the data as quickly.
Ah! Thank you, Colin. This certainly makes sense. I don't have the authority to scan or trim the drives (IT does), though I'd suspect it could use a cleaning, if not a reformat.
One thing, the glitch doesn't happen in the iMac's display (the viewing is instant). Only on the LaCie.
To be thorough, I will check physical connections, and also swap the display from another station to rule-out hardware malfunction.
