Logic would dictate that since we are going to view our prints under controlled lighting of D50, we should also set our display's white point to D50. If our display luminance level was as bright as our viewing environment and our paper color was perfectly neutral this would be the case. However, in reality this is not a perfect world. It is common for photographers who calibrated their displays to D50 to find that their image previews appear dim and a bit too yellow. There are a number of explanations as to why this happens. For one, the white point of most photographic paper is very blue when viewed under a D50 illuminant. On most displays it is harder to achieve high luminance levels at D50. It is for these reasons that, when working with photographic paper, calibrating to D65 may produce a better screen-to-print match. We want the white of the monitor to look the same as the white of our light box. My suggestion is to calibrate to a D65 white point.

From: Andrew Rodney, Color Management for Photographers, Focal Press, 2005

Reproduced with the permission of the author