Is there any kind of standard for how to set one's monitor when viewing an image?
In my case I submitted a shot that I know is very dark -- by design -- but was horrified to see how bad it looked on my computer's monitor at work. At home, on the display on my flat-panel 15" iMac, the image looks acceptable (in terms of brightness).
Anyway, just curious. I'm new to digital photography and this certainly seems like one small area where traditional photography has an edge. Maybe I should refine that and say "physical prints" have an edge -- ie. that a given photograph is viewed through a standard mechanism -- the single physical print (whose brightness, contrast, etc are not variable for each viewer).
My current dreams and nightmares submission is also suffering from this same problem, it is a very dark photo, but light enough on my monitor to be able to see what is taking place, but by the difference in comments I have received some people say all they see is darkness..how do I know if my monitor is right and theres wrong or the other way around?
There are standards, but they are expensive to get correct (about $200 for a calibration tool to give anything starting to approach accurate results)
You can also use your eye to judge - the graduated grey strips on the voting pages for example - the monitor contrast and brightness should be adjusted so that all of the steps are visible at both ends.
Older monitors may not be able to show the darker divisions, however, and the typical setup for wordprocessing work is usually much too dark for photographic viewing.
Mind you, give a negative to 5 different printers and you'll get 5 different prints too, so it isn't a unique problem for the digital world.
I hadn't noticed those grey strips on the voting pages. I just took a look with my monitor at work. All of the darker blocks on the right hand side were a single mass of black. Moving the brightness up to 100% allows me to see the variations on the darker blocks with this monitor.
Anyway, good to know. Maybe I should title future dark-ish submissions as "Crank up the brightness on your monitor" =).
