Performance

The Spyder 5 Capture Pro is a useful piece of kit for photographers, especially professionals or those making a living from their photography, to ensure absolute accuracy.

The monitor calibration tool, SpyderElitePro is very easy and quick to use, and the results are noticeable - especially if you’ve never calibrated your screen before. If you intend to do any printing of your images, it’s extremely useful to calibrate your screen to make sure the printed result will match what you see on the screen. In this regard, you can save yourself money that may be wasted on repeated prints.

Some of the other tools in the box may be used more infrequently, but are never-the-less good at what they do. The SpyderCube is a more advanced version of a grey card, but it helps you to get white balance and colours correct.

It’s a similar situation with the SpyderCheckr, which is also useful for ensuring correct colours, while the provided software is great for creating camera profiles. This can help you to colour match across different models of cameras, which is useful if you use a multi-camera setup for events such as weddings, and want to make sure all of the photos match each other.

Finally, the SpyderLensCal is something that most photographers won’t have a huge need for, but if you have a suspicion your lens isn’t focusing as it should, it’s handy, and does an excellent job in a relatively simple set-up.

Conclusion

Many photographers will mostly be interested in the Spyder5Elite monitor calibration tool. This is highly recommended for anybody who is a working professional, or is likely to be printing their images. The difference between an uncalibrated monitor and one which is can be huge, and for those that rely on accuracy, getting it wrong can be disastrous.

The rest of the tools in the Spyder 5 Capture Pro box are “nice to haves”, but not quite so essential. As an enthusiast photographer, you may want to question how often you’re likely to want to calibrate your lenses, for example, while a colour chart and the colour cube are more advanced versions of pieces of kit which can be picked up at a cheaper price.

As it stands, the Spyder5Elite retails for around £199, and you can expect to pay an extra £100 for this Spyder 5 Pro Capture complete kit. For the extra £100 you get a nice case, and some useful tools which are handy for professional photographers, but most enthusiasts won’t need all that often.

That said, if you were to buy everything separately, you’d spend more, so if you are interested in what each of the tools can offer, buying them all together like this represents good value for money.

In terms of performance, the monitor calibration tool is quick and easy to use, resulting in accurate colours. The difference can be reasonably subtle if you’ve previously calibrated your monitor, but if you haven’t, the differences are more obvious. Having the monthly reminder set up on your computer gives you confidence that you’re always working with an accurate monitor.

It’s also worth praising the Datacolor website at this point. If you’re unsure on how to set up any of the tools in the kit, then there’s lots of video tutorial and support provided here.

All in all, the Spyder 5 Capture Pro kit is great for ensuring utmost accuracy across your entire kit, giving you confidence that your images are at their best. It’s recommended for lots of different levels of photographer, but especially professional photographers who rely on perfection.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Value for money	4

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