Photochrome Camera Club

by Martin Taylor

How many times have you heard members at meetings say, “It didn’t look like this at home” when they see their image projected? Confusingly, others tell us that their images look pretty much the same in their home digital darkrooms as they do at the club. What’s going on?

Have you ever tried to watch a TV during the day in a very bright room? The reflections can be so distracting as to make the screen unwatchable and the colors and dynamic range of the picture are washed out in the extreme. The same TV in the same room can look great that night. That’s the destructive power of ambient light.

When we project images the hall is made as dark as possible as this provides the greatest available dynamic range the projector is capable off. At home you want to mimic this situation. Your monitor should be the brightest light-source in the room by far. If you edit your images during the day you should use blackout curtains. The wall behind your monitor should be very neutral (gray, black or white) so as not to color your perception of on screen hues. The ambient light in the room should be fixed, constant, diffused, indirect and outside your direct field of view.

If you have ceiling fixtures they should be dimmed as much as possible; if they can’t be dimmed they should be turned out and a table or desk lamp should be employed that is just bright enough to help you find your chair and to stop you tripping over your pile of back-issues of Shutterbug. If your room is too bright during the day you should save critical editing tasks until the sun goes down or you should think about retreating to the basement. Once you have reduced the ambient light as much as possible you should recalibrate your monitor either manually or using calibration hardware and software in your low-light setting.

When submitting images for projection be sympathetic to the conditions they will be viewed in at the club. Be sensitive to the ambient light in your digital darkroom and, hopefully, it will reduce your disappointment when you see your images projected. Things may have progressed and it may not smell of chemicals anymore but the digital darkroom should still be fairly dark.

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