I received my ColorMunki yesterday and just would like to report back that so far I'm pretty happy with it in terms of hardware. The software came with it for display calibration is really very super barebone, to the extend that it feels lacking even in terms of basic functionality(missing black level adjustment & custom color temperature), especially when compared with ArgyllCMS(I'm using dispcalgui for the front end). As the result, although the profile created from OEM software looks decent, it suffers a bit in shadow details, and there is no way to calibrate the display's WP to a specific viewing condition besides the standard D65, D50 & native...
The default icc v4 profile also screws up my display, not sure if that's a Mac Snow Leopard problem or theirs, but that's a minor issue.
For now I have my monitor set at native WP, 100lux & 0.25cd/m2 black using profile created by ArgyllCMS using "Single gamma + matrix". When tested it in photoshop, there is no noticeable color cast in gradient and I could detect 0 -> 1 level changes in black details. With OEM software, shadow details are not seen at level 4. This is also confirmed by visiting
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htmOne interesting result I found is that I actually get (slightly)more contrasty profile using my i1 display 2+CCMX correction matrix than just using the ColorMunki. Although visually they're very similar, I do get slightly better contrast ratio from i1d2+ccmx than ColorMunki around 670:1 vs 560:1, and the difference is visible.
Below are the dE I got when I ran a 51-set profile verification with both CM & i1d2 on the profile created by i1d2 cross checked using CM, then generated the differences between the two:
No of test patches in worst 10% are = 5
No of test patches in best 90% are = 46
Verify results:
Total errors (CIEDE2000): peak = 0.854821, avg = 0.487762
Worst 10% errors (CIEDE2000): peak = 0.854821, avg = 0.817497
Best 90% errors (CIEDE2000): peak = 0.780339, avg = 0.451922
I assume the result is within the tolerance for this level of instruments?
As for the for Colormunki's hardware accuracy, I'm more optimistic now after reading from more than one source that people have compared the i1pro against CM, and found the differences to be not as large as reported from drycreekphoto.com. One of which is from Graeme, the developer of ArgyllCMS:
i1 Rev A vs. Munki:
Total errors: peak = 0.926322, avg = 0.315342
i1 Rev D vs. Munki:
Total errors: peak = 0.908153, avg = 0.530078
So I'm not seeing much discrepancy between the Eye-One and the ColorMunki
on low level readings.
http://www.freelists.org/post/argyllcms/Display-Calibration-Hardware-Capabilities,9now I'll just have to worry about the unit to unit differences...
So overall I'm quite satisfied with ColorMunki and hope my finding will also be useful for other potential buyers. Maybe because I don't have any high end calibration hardware on hand to play around with, and I'll also have to see how well it matches the prints. I guess for now, ignorance is bliss...
Out of 5/5 stars, without the ArgyllCMS available, I'll give it a 3.5, and 4.5 when combined with ArgyllCMS.