Your monitor, LCD or CRT, needs to be set to view files in either of the two accepted photo capture gamut's - sRGB or Adobe RGB. To do this, we need to set the monitor to present files with a contrast gamma of 2.2 and a white point value of 6500K or "D65". This is the contrast and white point built into the "spec" of both sRGB and Adobe RGB and is one of the keys to great screen to print match.

You will need to use a monitor profiling kit to put your screen into it's most accurate modes and settings. Do yourself a favor and use one of recommended profiling kits as we test them all for you.

Use of a monitor profiling kit is no guarantee of accuracy, but all serious photographers must use a profiling kit to make each screen they use as accurate as possible. Please don't expect a profiling kit to make a screen with a score of 3 into a beautiful perfect screen to print match. Profiling kits will make your monitor as accurate as possible - the better the monitor, the better to accuracy when profiled properly. When it comes to kits, you'll be best served to buy the Monaco and EyeOne kits on our list and to stay away from the ColorVision and Huey products.

Originally posted by MarcelG on 24/09/07 @ 15:04One image showed a orange/yellow background on the Eizo, and *all* the other screens showed a red-orange background....[v]

Originally posted by wauske on 24/09/07 @ 18:01
Not to be nitpicking but Vista supplies (WDM-)drivers for recognised monitors which (for some reason) change the background color from white to yellowish/orangeish. Had to reinstall 3 times before I figured that out...

on September 15, 2007 at 12:02 pm Hendrik wrote:

First impression,

Well I finally got the 215TW in front of me. I think I have the last one available in the Netherlands, they told me it’s discontinued.

First impression is WOW, I came from a 17-inch CRT screen, so this is a BIG improvement considering the space available. I downloaded some Full-HD trailers and they looked fantastic.

After a few hours the WOW effect declined and I had a better look. I tried to calibrate the LCD with my Monaco Optix XR Pro software and DTP-94 colorimeter. Determining the correct contrast/brightness settings is a bit difficult. At this moment I have Brightness: 22; Contrast 67 and this gives me a whitepoint of 130cd/m^2 and blackpoint of 0,16cd/m^2. My guide was a printer-ramp file and choose a setting I just could see all gray values from RGB 1,1,1 up to RGB 254, 254, 254, this means no clipping at the black and white end. For the rest native color temp and gamma 2.2. Later I tried ColorEyes Pro with L* as a setting, and here also a well behaving screen.

Problem is, you don’t have a real tool to validate your profiling, because you test with the same tool. To the eyes, the grays look neutral and no significant banding. The black-to-white gradient showed me steps from black to white, but no clipping.

I don’t like the uneven illumination across the screen. With a mid-gray background I measure a luminance difference of 2 cd/m^2 between the left and right side of the screen. It doesn’t sound much, but I can see it clearly.

I don’t know if this is normal for LCD screens. This is my first and have no experience with other screens. Besides this there is some backlight leaking in all corners, but not very much.

At this moment, I’m still indecisive if I keep the screen or not. In my opinion it’s a step back compared to my ‘old’ CRT screen considering pure picture quality, but other aspects favor the LCD (especially screen space).

Alternatives are much more expensive (I paid 425 euro). Twice or triple the price, and I don’t believe they’re that much better. LCD technology still has it’s limitations, each year better screens are available. The really high-end screens $1500 maybe are better, but not an investment many want to make, and besides that they have their own limitations, like no HDCP input. For the money, I’m afraid there are no alternatives.

S-IPS panels are generally considered the best all around panel type, but they are more expensive and very few are made.
S-PVA/MVA panels offer better color reproduction and viewing angles than TN panels, have slightly worse response times than TN or S-IPS, offer the best contrast ratios, may suffer from color shifting or input lag and have higher availability than S-IPS panels.
TN panels are very cheap with fast response times but have inferior color reproduction, contrast ratios and viewing angles. Only panel type currently available in 22" size.

There is not a whole lot of information on the panel used in the 225BW and there is a lot of conflicting information on the net. There have been some individuals who have dismantled the monitor and found a Chi Mei Optoelectronics M220Z1-L01 panel.

TN (Twisted Nematic) panels are best known for their quick response time, but generally lack in other regards, such as viewing angles and color accuracy. Special films are often employed to improve viewing angles. It is noteworthy that the 225BW is the only widescreen panel in the 'B' series that has a specification for the full 16.7M colors. At this time, we are not 100% certain about the panel used in the monitor however, it may be a 6 bit panel using an algorithm to produce the full 16.7M.

This may be the most interesting part for you readers, but also the part where I lack most since it's my first TFT monitor. But I will give it a try.
The monitor has, as you probably already know, CMO's panel M220Z1-LO1 which is the latest TN panel. It has the 6bits-Hi FRC technique which can show 16.7M colors. Therefor it's not a true 8-bit panel but it's supposed to show much better colors than the older TN panels with 6bits+FRC technique that can only show 16,2M colors. At first I was sceptical against this technique since compensating like this seldom give as good result as the techniques that don't compensate.

My first impression of the monitor is that it has very bright and strong colors. Much better than the 16.2M color monitors I've looked at. All worries about the monitor being mediocre disappeared. When I look closer and test the monitor with programs like, Monitortest and Pixel Persistence Analyzer (PixPerAn) I see that it has a smooth and fine color rendering all over.
While fading, it has a smooth change between the colors. When looking at the pictures, note that the intensity and strong colors is missing. I have dicovered that it's very hard to take pictures and show exactly what I see on the monitor. The pictures are much more pale and grey than the reality. If there is anything to complain about, it's that the picture is a bit cold at delivery. This is marginal and easy to adjust in the settings. I can't really say that this technique is as good as the 8bit technique. But I can't say it's not either. I need to have a 8bit monitor to compare with to be sure.

The contrast is very good and the black is really black. It's much better than on my CRT monitor.

The viewing angles is at it is on a TN panel, not very good. Alas, it's not anything I've noticed until I remembered that I should test it a whole day after I got the monitor. I haven't managed to get any noticable difference in the corners when sitting directly in front of the monitor, as I've read that some experience on other monitors. Mostly I sit about 60-70cm from the monitor.