Spyder 3 Express

Is this a great piece of hardware I know many photographers use spyder3 but which one? Spyder 3 PRO or something else?

is the express worth of buying?
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I think any of them are worth buying. They'll all do a better job than you can do on your own. Paying more just gets you added profiling options and more manual control. Unless you're trying to match multiple monitors or you also want to profile your printer, I think a simpler, less expensive package is the way to go.

Yeah I've been debating myself on Express vs. Pro since the Pro adjusts for brightness/contrast (from my understanding) as well as the color and the Express (again my understanding) only adjusts color. I figure I want to not only have correct color but be able to tell if the photo has good contrast or was properly exposed as well so I've been leaning toward the Pro. Maybe I'm overthinking it but I'm used to adjusting everything when I use calibration discs on TV's, or when I had mine cal'd professionally they do everything not just color.

I agree whole-heartedly with Photo-John. I have Spyder 3 Elite Version 4 as I need to be able to calibrate two monitors "in parallel" so to speak for all my photo image editing. It does a great job, in my opinion, but I would agree that you do need some sort of colour calibration for your monitor and doing it yourself will not work, I know I tried...if you are doing any kind of digital photography, and if you are only worrying about one monitor, then the less expensive packages are probably the way to go, unless it is important for you to calibrate your printer. You might also look at Colormunki if you need to calibrate multiple monitors and/or a monitor and a printer. MY 0.02¢ worth.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

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Originally Posted by flyinion

Yeah I've been debating myself on Express vs. Pro since the Pro adjusts for brightness/contrast (from my understanding) as well as the color and the Express (again my understanding) only adjusts color. I figure I want to not only have correct color but be able to tell if the photo has good contrast or was properly exposed as well so I've been leaning toward the Pro. Maybe I'm overthinking it but I'm used to adjusting everything when I use calibration discs on TV's, or when I had mine cal'd professionally they do everything not just color.

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I don't believe that any of them calibrate brightness. That there is no brightness standard is quite evident if you post shots that depend on the same brightness values to show what you want to be seen. Some do monitor the brightness of the room light and let you know when it is bright enough to affect the color. - TF

I believe you're referring to ambient light correction. That isn't that big of an issue really, so long as you do your pp in consistent lighting. Even if you don't ( or can't), recalibrating just before a big project should do the trick nicely.

- Joe U.

I'm going to calibrate my monitor 24" SyncMaster P2450 and maybe a laptop if I'm going overseas.