There's a bit of a disconnect between hitting a contrast ration and a set cd/m2. Which is more important? First off, 140cd/m2 from the NEC out of the box is hard to nail, its such a bright unit that I'd personally not even start the process at less than 150 cd/m2...
Hit luminance first. Then work on dynamic range. Someday maybe we'll get the values on the money but its quite normal in my experience to see that I've hit target luminance but not exactly target contrast ratio on the 2490/2690 and 3090. No biggie really.
Having got my 3090 the other day, and coming to LCD's fresh from my old Mitsubishi 2060u, I have much confusion as to the steps toward calibration/profiling. I was very comfortable with the EyeOne-generated profiles through the HP APS profiling software, but I don't know where to start with the 3090. My SpectraViewII software is on the way, but in the meantime I've tried to profile it with the APS profilier. I made several profiles at successively lower luminance targets, starting with 140 and dropping eventually to 95! The display now looks pretty much the way my CRT did but with more shadow detail than my prints, and with more saturated reds than I like. I have several questions about steps to take:
1) I assume that I turn off all "automatic" features of the monitor, such as auto brightness level, etc?
2) Should I maintain the Uniformity setting, or turn it off? It does a nice job of reducing the luminance, too.
3) When setting the R, G and B values, the NEC menu gives the choice of 5 presets plus sRGB. Does it matter where I start from with these? (I know that starting with the sRGB is out because it makes adjustment impossible, but what about the others?)
4) Should I set the monitor to its native state before starting to profile, or leave it at the settings determined by the current profile?
5) Should I really set the luminance target at 150?
6) Unrelated to profiling, but perhaps you could answer: How do I check for dead, stuck or partially stuck pixels? I made full-screen tiffs at 2560x1600@101ppi in white, black, red, green and blue, but could not see any evidence of pixel mortality.
I print with the Z3100ps, and have been fairly happy with most of the APS-generated paper profiles, and there have been few surprises in terms of color and tone when the prints emerge, using my old CRT.
For somebody who started out by just wanting a computer, monitor and printer that would simply allow me to work on my photographs, it has become a long, expensive and intellectually challenging road, but I really would like to tame this monitor and get back to work.