Real contrast of your monitor

[Anton Meleshkevich]

Are everybody ok with grading using a monitor with 700-800:1 ANSI contrast? This is pretty usual contrast ratio (when set to 100 nit) on so called grading monitors like NEC, BenQ, etc.

I mean, for grading you should have at least 2000:1 ratio. Black at 0,05 nit or lower.

But I found, for some reason I'm more accurate in blacks when I work at monitors with 700-800 contrast ratio compared to 1150-1350:1.

I know about angles, ips, OLED,  environment lighting standards, etc. Just curious what you think about working with not 2000:1 ANSI contrast ratio displays. I'm talking about measured data. Not about data taken from specs of course. 

[Andy Minuth]

Ansi contrast of a typical DCI projection is around 100:1 (that is the minimum tolerance). A lot of big projects have their main grade done in such an environment. 

But you can argue that an average picture level of 50% (ANSI checkerboard) is not that common. Typical images are darker, which increases the intra-frame contrast of a projection.

[Anton Meleshkevich]

My fault. I mentioned ANSI contrast to exclude measurements of many TV panels where is impossible to turn off auto dimming even in service menu. ON OFF contrast can be about 3000:1 there because of auto dimming full screen black patch.
I was talking about usual contact probes. So neighbor white squares can't affect that much to black squares as it happens with non-contact colourimeters.
So I meant just a usual contrast ratio measurement. Saying about ANSI was just to make sure, we are not talking about auto dimming.

Edited February 3, 2019 by Anton Meleshkevich

[Andy Minuth]

I see. I think the contrast depends on the conditions people will watch it in. Sequential contrast (without auto-dimming) in a real cinema is usually between 1000-2000:1. Having 2000:1 during mastering sounds reasonable.

Some people at home have around 4000:1 on their TVs (OLED for SDR). During mastering one should try to at least match that. Having more is better in both cases.