Not sure if my input will help or not on the monitor calibration thing, but all the images look fine on mine, and I have the brightness set pretty low on both of mine as I sit pretty close to them.
Telling you all this doesn't really help anyone does it.....lol

dabu: Both the proxy version and the high poly are looking pretty nice, I especially like the underwater one, a little more work and that'll look lovely!

Good luck with the rest of your project.