Question about black levels in video

[90sTV]

I'll preface this by saying I'm viewing these on a lousy, non-calibrated computer monitor, so maybe that's misleading.

Anyway, I was looking at a couple of image demonstrations for correct and incorrect black levels, and it seems to me that the "correct" levels still result in some crushed shadow detail.

For instance, here: http://www.thetvaddict.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/24-top-bottom.jpg

While the bottom example looks washed out, it does display the detail in the guy's hair, for example...whereas the top example you see practically no detail in his hair.

Then in this picture: https://forum.videohelp.com/images/guides/p2006437/levels.jpg

You see much more shadow detail separated in the bottom image, at least on my screen, including making out the green grass.

Is this simply a matter of how the video creators intended the levels to be, and we can tell what they intended simply by having a calibrated monitor?

It seems like almost every example for correct levels I've seen has some crushed blacks.

[poisondeathray]

First thing you should do is calibrate your display and adjust your graphics card settings etc...Make sure you can see 0-255 shades white to black (in RGB) in the first place

And , it can be combination of many things, there are slight differences between displays, even on expensive studio grade calibrated setups

But don't confuse how you want it to look , for how it's supposed to look . There are broadcasting standards and set conversion matrices for a reason.

The only thing you can say for certain is the washed out images are clearly wrong - because black isn't black. Sure, there might have been a number of things that went wrong, from the transfer, to screenshot taking method etc...ie. It might not be as how the filmmakers wanted it to look. But those two examples are clearly supposed to be "dark". So most of the data should be clustered in the shadows. Sure, you can brighten and increase contrast up the darks and still keep black=black if you, or the colorist wanted to, but that's subjective. Whereas black not being black is entirely objective. You can even make a dark, night time scene look very bright, but it probably wouldn't look right or be the "right" thing to do. The colorist could have brightened up the hair only ,or certain parts of the picture only, if he wanted to with masks, power windows etc...

What is not demonstrated in your example , is the limited dyamic range in other scenes (e.g. brighter scenes). The washed out pictures might show more shadow detail on these examples, but on a higher dyanmic range scene , you will be missing details. The "proper" method will show 219 legal "shades" available (from 16-235). The "lift" washed out version will only have ~195 "shades", (from ~40-235) assuming the lift is only on the shadows, assuming the brights aren't touched. The low midtones will be compressed. So important things like typical skin tones won't look as good

I lifted the shadows here, and sure you can see more shadow details, but it's probably "too contrasty" for the "look" of the content