Monitor and Changing Ambient Light

[HSakols]

My new workspace has windows and curtains and never gets direct light.  However, I work at my hobby whenever I can manage whether it be day or night.  I understand that if I work in a dark environment I want a lower monitor luminance say 80 and if I work in a brighter environment I might want my luminance to be higher say at 150.  Right now I have my NEC MultiSync PA272w at the default of 140.  Is there an approach I should use for working in an environment that does not always have one consistent brightness.  I'm thinking that at night I should avoid turning all the lights off. 

[howardm]

I'd hate to have to work in darkness (all lights off).  Frankly, I'd stabilize the brightness of the room for the most part and get some amount of light in there at night.  The 140 default is actually (IMHO) pretty bright.  I put fairly window shades in my work area and generally use white or light grey 'backgrounds' in PS/LR and the computer that is approx what the mat or wall/display space is.

[Czornyj]

I sometimes have to work at night in dim environment, so I calibrate my monitor to 30cd/m^2, and then manually increase the gamma value from 2,2 to 2,4-2,6.

But it's better to arrange brighter background around the display.

[Tim Lookingbill]

You don't have to work in the dark during the evenings. Get you some decent daylight balanced CFL's/LED's. These lights will not be perfectly spectral representations of daylight but they'll provided enough neutral looking light so you don't have to work in the dark.

The thread linked below I posted pix of my living room and other areas of my home showing the neutrality differences as well as spectral color errors seen mainly in yellows and honey colors as in the pine wood futon (note the beach towel color changes between window light vs CFL). It's not a deal breaker for print matching especially for a hobbyist.

http://photo.net/casual-conversations-forum/00cHcE?start=0

I'm a hobbyist photographer and have my 27" LED LG display luminance calibrated to 100 cd/m2. It's been working just fine for me going on for over ten years.

[digitaldog]

The ambient light can't be too low (anything striking the display affects your perception of the blackest black). You can go too high. And you'd ideally what cd/m2 set such when you view the display and a print next to it, ideally without it striking the display as much as possible, the two appear to visually match. What that number has to be can't be defined without some trial and error and we have no idea how you're viewing the prints.