Charles Poynton

I am an independent contractor specializing in the physics, mathematics, and engineering of digital colour (color!) imaging systems, including digital still cameras, digital video, HDTV, digital cinema (D-cinema) and digital intermediate (DI) systems. I am involved in engineering wide colour gamut (wide color gamut/wide gamut color) systems, including xvYCC; I am an expert in colorspaces such as DCI P3 RGB, AdobeRGB, sYCC601, and AdobeYCC601. I do technology forecasting, systems modelling, algorithm development, video signal processing architecture, colour characterization and calibration, and image quality assessment. (More...) It was about 20 years ago that I decided that HDTV should have square pixels ...

I'm a PhD student at Simon Fraser University; my supervisor is Brian Funt.

I live in Toronto with my wife Barbara Morris, RMT, CTP Dipl – a massage therapist and psychotherapist – and our two girls, 19 and 21.

home office: +1 416 535 7187
e-mail: prepend my first name to the obvious domain.
Skype (intermittent user): cpoynton
Twitter: momaku

I continue to be flummoxed by the absence of any viable, modern, realistic standard for the “gamma” – or properly, electro-optical conversion function (EOCF) – of studio reference displays for video and HD. With the demise of CRTs, and with the imminent introduction of reference-grade flat panel monitors, I believe that such a standard is now critically important. More information is available. (In October, ITU achieved agreement on gamma of 2.4; however, reference white luminance, reference black luminance, and viewing conditions are still undecided.)

 Personal stuff
& biographical data