Early in 2021 Dave Wyble and Roy Berns formed a new company, Gray Sky Imaging, founded to address the color and imaging needs of the cultural heritage community. Stay tuned for some exciting stuff from this new adventure!

So, 2020. Wow. The major thing that happened for Avian Rochester was moving the lab and office home. Over the summer we renovated 1/2 the basement for the lab, and one of the bedrooms for Dave’s office. It is very comfortable, and Patty is also home 100% for her work, but supporting Avian Rochester as well as her own endeavors.

Mike, Dave, and Art outside NRC in Ottawa.

On October 2019, Dave Wyble presented the paper “Heading Down the Profiling Rabbit Hole” at the Joint CORM, CNC,CIE, and CIE-USNC meeting in Ottawa, Canada. The meeting program may still be available online. At the meeting, the whole Avian family of companies were present, with representatives from Avian Rochester, Avian Technologies, and Avian Light. The image below shows Dave with Avian Light Owner/Metrologist Mike Jergens (left) and Avian Technologies President and CTO Art Springsteen.

NEWS FLASH! As of August 2019, Avian Rochester has entered into an exclusive marketing agreement for our Next Generation Camera Target with our trusted partner DT Cultural Heritage, makers of preservation-grade digitization solutions. If your field is Cultural Heritage, including Museums, Libraries, Archives, Universities, and service bureaus that serve any of those entities, please visit their DT NGT2 page for details and purchase options.

As a part of this agreement, Dave Wyble attended the DT East Coast Round Table at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. The image below documents that they let Dave present in front of actual customers.

Dave presenting to the 2019 DT Roundtable.

In March 2019, Dave Wyble attended the joint TAGA/ ISCC in Minneapolis, MN. ISCC meetings always provide a great meeting place for old friends in the color field, as well as interactions with the students and professionals that always attend TAGA meetings.

In May 2019, Dave Wyble attended IS&T’sArchiving Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. As a part of that conference, Dave taught a pair of related short courses SC1A: Introduction to Color Measurement for Archiving and SC2A: Advanced Concepts in Color Measurement

In November 2018, Dave Wyble attended IS&T’sColor and Imaging Conference. As a part of that conference Dave taught a short course entitled “Fundamentals of Spectral Measurements for Color Science.” Dave also presented the paper “Quantifying Spectral Sensitivity Mismatch Using a Metameric Color Rule,” coauthored with Roy Berns, from RIT. As always, the Color and Imaging Conference is a great venue of color science experts from around the world. Vancouver is a great city, as seen by some images below. And yes, we love the X-Files!

Dave and the Laughing MenAnother Dave visiting
the Laughing Men
Munsell Color Science Lab
alumni at CIC 2018

As a part of his role as Director of Color Science within Avian Technologies, LLC Dave Wyble attended the International Diffuse Reflectance Conference (IDRC). This meeting was at Wilson College in Chambersburg PA. This meeting was a lot of “new business” for Dave; new people, and especially new subject matter. This meeting focuses on NIR measurements and applications, which bring a different set of issues than traditional visible and color measurements. Dave’s primary mission at the conference was helping with the Avian Technologies exhibition booth.

In June 2018 Dave Wyble attended the long-planned ISCC Munsell Centennial Color Symposium, held in Boston MA at the Massachusetts Institute of Art. This meeting was a unique assembly of artists, scientists, industry people, as well as educators, each interested in some aspect of color.

In May 2018 Dave Wyble attended IS&T’s 2018 Archiving Conference, held at the National Archives in Washington D.C. At that meeting, Dave presented the paper “Spectral Implications for Camera Calibration Target.” The talk was largely based on the work performed for the Library of Congress.

In March 2018 Dave Wyble attended TAGA’s Annual Technical Conference in Baltimore MD. As a part of that meeting, Dave presented the paper “Capabilities and Benefits of Controllable LED Illumination.” The talk was well-received, as there has been a lot of interest in LED illumination in the industry. In January 2018 Dave Wyble attended IS&T’s Electronic Imaging Conference. This was a great success, connecting with many old friends and colleagues. Dave also taught a short course, “Fundamentals of Spectral Measurements for Color Science.”

In September 2017 Dave Wyble presented the paper “Use of Multi-LED Illumination Systems: What can they do? What can’t they do?” at SPECAD´sRETAC 2017 in Milwaukee WI. The invited paper was a part of a dedicated session on LED illumination, and its potential impact on color in the plastics industry. As a part of the meeting, Dave staffed an exhibition table showing products from Avian Technologies and ThousLite. Both the presentation and the exhibition were well received. The conference is now beyond its 50th year, and it really shows. Things ran very smoothly, and it is very clear that the attendees are a group of close-knit friends and competitors, all in one room.

In August 2017 Dave Wyble presented the paper “Dependence of Bidirectional Instrument Performance on Sample BRDF Properties” at the CORM/ISCC Joint Conference Troy, NY. This meeting was small, but covered a lot of ground, topically and by the backgrounds of the attendees. The ISCC and CORM are long-time cooperating organizations, and it showed by the mixing of interests across the group. Within the meeting, the ISCC held it’s official Annual Meeting, where Dave received a certificate of thanks for his term on the Board of Directors.

In May 2017 Dave Wyble presented the paper “Next Generation Camera Calibration Target for Archiving” at IS&T´s Archiving 2017 in beautiful Riga, Latvia. The paper was very well received, and the conference provided an opportunity to promote the Next Generation Camera Target for camera calibration. Representatives were there from several major museums and libraries, and the interest in the Target was high. There are many good folks, and many social and professional connections were created or renewed.

Also while in Riga, Dave also taught a newly-developed short course, “Fundamentals of Color Measurements.” In March 2017, Dave Wyble attended the AATCCInternational Conference in Wilmington NC. THOUSLITE exhibited their products at the meeting, and on their behalf we were there to interact with the hundreds of potential customers. The meeting was very successful, as Dave rekindled some old friendships, and made a few new ones too.

Dr M. Ronnier LuoThousand Lights and Avian Technologies product exhibition

In December 2016, Avian Rochester signed an agreement to act as the US Strategic Partner for Thousand Lights Lighting (Changzhou) Limited (called “THOUSLITE” for short). THOUSLITE designed and produces world class spectrally tunable lighting products. Under the agreement, Avian Rochester will act in a sales, service, and support role for THOUSLITE color and imaging customers in the US. This new venture opens up many new possibilities for Avian Rochester, and we are very excited for the opportunity to join in the success of THOUSLITE in the US.

In November 2016, Dave Wyble attended the IS&T´s Color and Imaging Conference in San Diego, CA. Dave chaired the Friday half-day workshop “Life of a Color” which also served as the Inter-Society Color Council Annual Meeting. On Tuesday, Dave taught the CIC short course “Fundamentals of Spectral Measurements for Color Science”. The course had about 10 attendees and was well-received. If you or your employees cannot attend these conferences, customized tutorials and training are available for your company.

As a follow up to the development of the Next Generation Target (NGT) for The Library of Congress, Avian Rochester has been awarded an eight-month contract, beginning Sep 1 2016, to analyze the target and compare it to existing camera calibration targets. The first part of the project is to analyze the NGT with other common commercial camera targets. They will each be analyzed to determine their effectiveness as camera calibration targets using OpenDICE software. To move the process towards a spectral-based system, we wil also characterize the spectral sensitivities of several LoC digitization systems. We are greatly looking forward to working closely in the labs with our LC colleagues.

Dave Wyble attended the 2016 CORM Annual Technical Conference in Gaithersburg MD, in May. It was great to see many old friends and colleagues. The meeting was held at the conference facilities at NIST which always feels a little like the color measurement home away from home.

Dave Wyble attended the 2016 IS&T´s Archiving Conference in Washington DC in April. This was his first Archiving conference, and it provided the opportunity to interact with the Library of Congress personnel for whom the Next Generation Targetis being developed. The Archiving conference provides a venue for scientists working to improve the physical archiving processes (imaging, reproduction, etc) as well as museum folks who have to deal with the “nuts and bolts” of archiving, such as proper database management. It always helps when diverse people assemble and share ideas. Until we are all exposed to the larger picture we can’t really find a global solution to any significant problem. Avian Rochester was awarded a one year contract by The Library of Congress to develop and produce the Next Generation Target for camera characterization. This contract, concluded in late Aug 2016, required the research, design, and production of 20 complete targets, each consisting of 130 colored patches. To fulfill the LoC requirements, new techniques were developed to create and mount the patches. We are hoping to apply these techniques soon so that other markets can have the benefits afforded to the LoC by this target.

Dave Wyble attended IS&T´s Color Imaging Conference in Darmstadt Germany in October 2015. Tuesday that week, Dave delivered the short course “Fundamentals of Spectral Measurements for Color Science.” Dave has long history of participation with this conference, and it was exciting to attend again the 2015 meeting in this great new international venue! While in Darmstadt we were able to tour the facilities of the Fraunhofer Institute, including the 3D Printing labs of our good friend, Philipp Urban. Representing FluxData Inc,

Dave and Patty Wyble attended the 28th Session of the CIE in Manchester UK June 29 to July 3 2015. This is a CIE quadrennial meeting, bringing together researchers and engineers from all seven CIE Divisions. As 2015 is also The International Year of Light there was a heavy emphasis on lighting technologies of all kinds. Effectively this meant that most sessions involved LEDs in one way or another. The attendees span academia, industrial and government labs, with exhibits by several instrument manufacturers.

With co-author John Seymour (aka: “John the Math Guy”) of Quadtech Inc, Dave Wyble presented the paper “Investigation of the Implementation Aspects of the M1 Condition” at the 2015 TAGA conference in Albuquerque NM. The paper described the use of a set of fluorescent acrylic tiles to infer the nature of the light source in a commercial spectrophotometer. As an informal member of the RIT contingent, Dave also got a plug in this RIT press release. (more)

As of fall 2014, Avian Rochester has been certified to produce the scanner calibration slides for Omnyx/GE. Until now, our traceable small-spot transmittance measurements were used by Omnyx/GE for calibrating their whole slide imaging (WSI) scanners. By moving production of the slides to Avian Rochester, they now move their inventory and inspection processes to us, as well as connecting the production and measurement of the slides.
Dave Wyble attended the combined CIE/ISCC/ASTM meeting at NIST in Gaithersburg MD in June 2014. This meeting demonstrated many new ideas and standards discussions keeping all up to date on the color measurement field. While in the D.C. area, Dave also attended a portion of the ICC Medical Imaging Working Group at the FDA facility in Silver Springs, MD. This working group is charged with developing ICC standards for many critical medical imaging applications.

New digs! As of January 1, 2014, Avian Rochester has new office and lab space. This downtown Rochester location provides more flexible space. We are very excited with this milestone for the company, and we look forward to increased product lines and other services for you. (our new shipping address

Dave Wyble attended the 2013 IS&T Color and Imaging Conference in Albuquerque, NM in November. Prior to the meeting, Dave taught a two hour tutorial titled “Fundamentals of Spectral Measurements for Color Science”. Here is a list of other tutorials that could be delivered for you and your company.

Dave Wyble attended the 2012 ISCC Annual Meeting in Manchester NH in October. This was a very successful, if small, meeting including an exhibition by Avian Technologies showing off their wares.

Dave Wyble attended the 2012 CORM Annual Meeting in Ottawa Canada in June. It was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, and keep abreast of the latest products and technologies in the optical radiation measurement field.

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