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December 15, 2008
Of colour temperature and monitor settings.
When I worked for the big television companies they would have clever men in complicated rooms wielding small screwdrivers whose job it was to maintain a consistent picture quality.
The big studio cameras were never switched off, rather they were wheeled into a small cupboard with a bright light and all pointed at a test-card for the night. This was because they were all balanced to give exactly the same picture, so when you cut from one to the next it was seamless.
studio cameras on the set of TVS Saturday morning show No73
It took lots of oscilloscopes and dials and turny knobs to set these cameras up correctly and if you switched them off you had to start again from scratch.
Then of course you go round to Mrs. Miggin’s to watch TV and find that her set has been tuned by next-door’s cat and the whole thing looks like a hot day in a Mexican desert. You can’t win.
Much the same thing happens on the internet. Depending on how your monitor is set up the colour, intensity, contrast and brightness of the images on this page can cover most of the spectrum.
Take Picasso’s Science and Charity. Painted in 1897, it now rests in the Museu Picasso de Barcelona. Here is the relevant page from their website:
Now consider what you get from Google Images on the same subject:
Not only do they vary in colour and intensity, but also in orientation.
Even the great artists don’t get it right first go. It takes time to construct a painting. I found all these sketches on the excellent On-line Picasso Project:
Note, however, none of them is flipped horizontally. How come eight of the 18 images on the first Google page are flipped horizontally? You can almost forgive hanging a Rothko the wrong way up, though really they should know better - but to flip a figurative painting? Why?
Posted by john at December 15, 2008 06:03 PM