LG C2 OLED SETTINGS
Updated: Dec 8, 2022
(Originally posted: Oct 30, 2017 and first updated September 2019.)
In December 2022, I got a new LG OLED TV to replace my old one that I bought in 2017, so am updating this page for the new monitor and am sharing my settings.
These settings are not guaranteed to work on other models or on other devices besides mine (even the same model) or even on this same device after burn time. Manufacturing tolerances and day-to-day drift and other factors like surrounding temperature are non-negligible. So, this is for informational purposes only -- you should use a spectrometer and a test pattern rather than copying my settings if you really want a calibrated TV.
These settings, for the moment, hit the colorspace specifications (ITU-R BT 1886) very well. This means that tones and colors are reproduced correctly to a very good tolerance. "Reproduced correctly" means that the tones and colors being called for by the incoming signal are properly obeyed. It does not guarantee that the incoming signal itself is correct or that any one specific person will like the results. So, "correct reproduction" is about fidelity and maintaning intent, not about wow-factor or about personal taste in monitor settings.
I was disappointed in "Filmmaker Mode," which is advertised (either explicitly or implicitly) as serving up the author's intent at the push of a single button. The one button does indeed turn off motion smoothing and some other annoying processing, but the color and tonal rendering of the off-the-shelf defaults for "Filmmaker Mode" are pretty bad. Not just slightly off from the specification, but quite far off. Anyway, I was still able to get truly great results after fiddling with settings: pretty darn close to (though by no means fully up to) the precision of a studio reference monitor you might find in a professional color grading suite.
On a different topic relating to calibration, I'd also like to mention that there is a popular myth that the standard colorspace spec (rec1886, often incorrectly referred to as "rec709") calls for a white luminance level of 100 cd/m^2 (or 100 "nits"). But this is false: the actual source, the colorspace documents themselves, give no specification at all for the black or white luminance levels: in fact, to the contrary, they very pointedly indicate that those levels are variable. So they can be defined by user settings or device capabilities. What the spec does demand out of luminance and contrast is how a gray ramp progresses from black to white -- in other words it demands a very specific shape to the tone curve for relative levels but actively leaves open absolute levels.
The (false) myth about 100 nits comes from an industry recommendation (NOT from the colorspace definition itself) for how monitors should be viewed in darkened color grading bays, not how they're viewed anywhere else, especially not in semi-dark rooms or normally lit rooms (let alone bright rooms!).
This flexibility for the whitepoint luminance not to be fixed to an arbitrary absolute value but to be adjustable with taste, viewing environment, and hardware capabilities, is not only the actual position of the colorspace specification (despite widespread misinformation to the contrary), it also makes sense with how the human visual system works, which is itself adaptive/relative, not absolute/fixed.
So, I personally usually calibrate to around 150 or 175, not to 100, so that I can comfortably enjoy my TV in the viewing situations that realistically come up in my living room where the TV is. In this case I've decided to go with 150 nits, but I was able to get excellent results all the way up to 200 nits (I didn't check it above 200) by changing only one setting (once the other settings were properly dialed in). That one setting is "OLED Pixel Brightness." So, when everything else is right, you can change the overall luminance while still holding true to the colorspace spec by changing just that one setting.
So, with the below settings, the Electro-Optical Transfer Function (the tone curve) measures very tight to spec all through the range, even just above black where many monitors sometimes go way off. And all the color patches that I checked, including the whitepoint also hit their own targets very well (mostly under +/- 0.005 in CIE xy units).
Here are the settings notes:
Before starting to adjust the picture settings, go to
General --> OLED Care --> Device Self Care --> Energy Saving
And turn off Energy Saving, otherwise the TV will lock you out from changing "OLED Picture Brightness" on the Brightness page.
Then go to
Picture --> Advanced Settings
to begin:
Brightness
OLED Picture Brightness: 62 (for around 150 nits)
------150 nits is just my preference: other settings can be used and still hit spec
Adjust Contrast: 100
Black Level: 50
Auto Dynamic Contrast: Off
Peak Brightness: Off
Gamma: 2.4
Video Range: Auto
Color
Color Depth: 50 (to correctly hit calibration spec)
------or Color Depth: 45 (for my subjective adjustment just to ever so slightly ease off on electronic looking vibrancy)
Tint: 0
Color Gamut: Auto Detect
Fine Tune:
------All settings and sub-settings zeros EXCEPT "Red-->Adjust Saturation: -9"
White Balance:
------Color Temperature: Warm 50
------All other settings in this heading should be left at the default zeros.
Clarity
Adjust Sharpness: 0
Super Resolution: Off
Noise Reduction: Off
MPEG Noise Reduction: Off
Smooth Gradation: Off
Real Cinema: Off
True Motion: Off
Apply To All Inputs
Don't forget to apply the new settings to all inputs, otherwise when you change to a different input (like, to a different HDMI input), you won't have these settings.
FILMMAKER MODE Auto Start
Off.
Reduce Blue Light
Off.