Spyder 3 Elite
 | Format: Electronics List Price: $324.99 Our Price: $232.64 Your Save: $ 92.35 ( 28% ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Average Customer Rating:   |
Features: State-of-the-art optical design, with the industry's only 7 detector color engine and largest light aperture, providing unrivaled performance
Patented filter array and embedded ambient light sensor
Unique fusion of design excellence and functionality - Spyder3's desktop cradle can be used for storage, ambient light monitoring, ortripod attachment
Increases light sensitivity 400%.
Features the largest screen sample area or aperture in the industry resulting in improved accuracy on LCD screens and a faster calibration time.
Editorial Reviews:
From capturing images to digital editing and printing your work, you can rely on consistent, accurate color throughout your studio and digital workflow with Spyder3Elite. Designed for the way photographers work, Spyder3Elite is the next generation in calibration accuracy, precision and speed, with industry-leading performance for the precision calibration of LCD, CRT, projector and notebook displays, allowing you to create profiles to your specifications and bring a new level of color control to your work. Three superior, interchangeable attachment methods - large area suction cup, counterweight, or tripod mount ReCAL reduces full calibration time by more than half allowing you to quickly and easily re-calibrate on a more frequent basis or before any important shoot or post-production project High precision sensor automatically measures ambient light within a room Unlimited calibration targets for white point, gamma, white luminance, and black luminance New L-Star Calibration Option to generate unique tonal response curves for open shadows and detailed highlights. Display and StudioMatch assistants New Support for Next Generation Displays Computer Connection - USB System Requirements - Windows 2000, XP 32/64, Vista 32/64, Mac OS X (10.3 or higher), USB , Color monitor resolution 1024x768 or greater, 16-bit video card (24-bit recommended),128MB of available RAM, 100MB of available hard disk space
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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Works great with dual monitors and vista 64-bit, no bugs noticed
Comment: My setup: Vista 64-bit, dual monitors: a dell 2001fp, and a viewsonic 2025wm.
If you have dual monitors and want them to have correct and matching color calibration, then I recommend the Spyder 3 Elite.
After running the spyder3utility app I was able to notice a pretty huge improvement on my viewsonic and my dell was pretty well calibrated by default so little calibration was necessary.
After running the calibration, it displays some black and white and color images, and allows you to toggle between before calibration and after so you can see the difference. Also, it shows color curves for before and after, providing a mathematical representation of the change.
The software included is called Spyder3Utility and it does NOT automatically change your calibration for you based on the lighting. I incorrectly thought the app was broken because I assumed that the ambient light monitor would adjust my calibration on the fly.
What it does do is measure your ambient light periodically and the system tray icon will to a red slash if conditions are sub-optimal. You can right click on the icon and see the current levels and what level it recommends. For example if lighting is "very low" it may recommend to adjust your lights to "moderately low".
I give the Spyder 3 Elite 4 stars instead of 5 because the bright blue LED is annoying and I was let down because I expected it would adjust your calibration throughout the day/evening. I suppose you could put some tape over the LED if you want.
It seems they fixed all the software bugs by the time I bought this (I downloaded the latest version from colorvision's website instead of using the CD). I have noticed zero bugs.
I cannot guarantee that it will work flawlessly with your specific monitor. And if a reviewer says your monitor doesn't work with this device then you might want to avoid it. I'd check colorvision's site to see if they support your monitor, and use google to find others experiences.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Overall a good color calibrator
Comment: When I first got this product in I was a little worried but this product has turned out to be a great little colorimeter.It does not take a long time to calibrate as it did in the pass and recalibration is just as fast. I works great on 2 monitors too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hands down the best calibrator for OS X
Comment: Apparently the 3.0 upgrade is a miserable on Windows based on the reviews here, but for those of you using a Mac running OS X, that thankfully is definitely not the case.
I used to have the Spyder2 and the software was utter crap on OS X and made me cringe every time I needed to recalibrate. I was nervous at first buying the Spyder3 because of that, but per advice of a friend I took the plunge. I am very happy I did as the new 3.0 software is obviously a complete rewrite of the OS X version. Multi-monitor support works (I have three 24" monitors) perfectly, the ability to custom calibrate to specific requirements works as expected, and the software look and feel (while not having a true OSX L&F) has seen a very large improvement in appearance and useability.
The only complaint I have is that the utility app which monitors the ambient light in your environment doesn't have the setting in the plist to make it not show up in the dock (why would I need a dock icon AND a menu bar icon?), but thankfully that is easy to hack in.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bad software renders the device useless
Comment: The device gives consistent readings. But the software that comes with it is so poorly designed, and so buggy, that it makes the product completely worthless.
All of my monitor calibrations would come out very red in the highlights, and very green in the mid-tones. I verified this by using the "colorimeter" tool in the software, that allows for entering RGB values and obtaining readings. It confirmed what my eyes were telling me. Even immediately after color calibration, the resulting color profile was highly inaccurate. Obviously, the automatic calibration process was very buggy.
I tried to adjust the color curves target, to get a more accurate result. But bugs prevented me from doing that, as well. The help document states that one can click the "preview" checkbox to see the changes as one makes the adjustments. But there was no "preview" checkbox! I did see a preview as I adjusted the blue curve, but there was none as I adjusted the red and green curves. Then when I did not like the result, I hit the "cancel" button. But the cancel button does not work. The changes I made stayed, until I selected a pre-set color curve.
So I tried using the "colorimeter" tool in the software to set the calibration manually. Even this was buggy. Some color spaces (such as lab) have positive and negative possible values. But the "colorimeter" tool does not tell you if the result was positive or negative. When you have the value close to zero, you must experiment back and forth to see if you are off slightly by a positive number, or off slightly by a negative number. This makes using the tool extremely frustrating and time consuming.
Various other bugs exist. For example, the "X" in the window of the main application does not function. It does not close the application. One must choose "File" and "Quit" to exit. There are places where I accidentally started the wrong wizard, but the "back" button did not work. I was unable to close it from there, and had to open up the Windows Task Manager to kill the process. There are numerous factual, spelling, and grammatical errors in the help file.
It is inexcusable that a company would ship a product with software this bad. It is easily one of the buggiest software products I have ever used. It is so buggy, it makes the device largely unusable.
This product is not able to function enough to provide me any value.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Worst monitor profiler ever....
Comment: I tried this on my samsung 22" and got a different color cast each time. I tried getting help from the tech support on the spyder 3 site and no one ever replied back. I guess the support ticket didn't really mean much. I looked on their forum and their are tons of unanswered help questions from their customers. That was enough for me , i sent this piece of junk back . If you where like me and listen to people on photography forums like DPR , don't buy this thing !!! Its over hyped by people who don't know what their talking about . The software is buggy , it would lose Profiles . I got the eye one 2 and couldn't be happier .
The spyder 3 elite isn't even as good as the old pantone huey . Why this is considered a pro tool is beyond me.
If you see anyone calling this thing a pro tool. Laugh and then smack them over the head with a news paper.
edit* No idea why it won't let me give it 1 star.
Technical Details
Binding: ElectronicsBrand: ColorVision
EAN: 0875720000698
Feature: State-of-the-art optical design, with the industry's only 7 detector color engine and largest light aperture, providing unrivaled performance
Format: CD-ROM
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: ColorVision, Inc.
Manufacturer: ColorVision, Inc.
Model: S2EL100
Platform: Windows XP
Publisher: ColorVision, Inc.
Studio: ColorVision, Inc.
