On Tour with Guido Karp | EIZO

	Guido Karp, Germany’s most famous concert photographer, never travels light when he goes on tour. Alongside numerous cameras, lenses, and computers, Karp often has EIZO ColorEdge monitors among his equipment.
Photo by Uwe Johannsen

Uncompromising technology that simply always works

Guido Karp spends most of his time away from home, working at concerts, studio shoots, and the photo beauty contest ‘Princess for One Day.’ As Karp wants to produce the perfectly finished photos on site, he needs to take the EIZOs with him. “My monitors have already traveled around the world with me countless times in the last five to six years,” says Karp. “You can of course see slight signs of aging on my aluminum Rimowa cases – I’ve had foam padding installed to protect the fragile devices – but the monitors still look great.” The ColorEdge monitors have been subject to significant wear for years now. They are loaded into trucks or airplanes nearly every day and it is a well-known fact that your baggage isn’t always handled so delicately at the airport. “My artists rely on me. That’s why I need uncompromising technology that simply always works,” says Karp, getting to the heart of the matter when discussing his high standards for quality. His equipment is put through a never-ending endurance test on a daily basis in different towns while on tour. Every day, photo editing equipment is set up and dismantled, packed up, and transported, meaning it is exposed to constant temperature fluctuations. But this isn’t just taxing for the equipment: “It is rare to find the perfect working conditions when working away from the studio. Instead we have to deal with what we find on site,” explains Karp, describing the challenge that he and his team face every day.

The monitors now feature self-calibration

This makes it all the more important that Karp and his team can rely on correct, color-proof image displays on their monitors. “We calibrate the monitors almost every day to ensure that what we see on our screens is also sent to the customers in perfectly edited form,” explains Karp. “Even so, the devices are exposed to significant temperature fluctuations over night in the truck or airplane.” That is another reason why the concert photographer switched to an EIZO ColorEdge CG247. “The latest generation of devices is self-calibrating with an integrated sensor. This time can be used for other tasks and we don’t need to bring an additional measurement device with us anymore,” says Karp. “We save time and space, both of which are scarce on tour.”