CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[loribates]

I would appreciate it greatly if someone can give me direction. I've not gone through this process before. I'm using a SpyderII. I've only ever used it to calibrate my monitors.

I don't want to jack things up here so this is with brite/constrast set to 50, tint and contrast also at 50. I just did a basic greyscale per the E-tech site for the marquee... basically throwing up the internal pattern and adjusting drive and g2 per their instructions. This is as far as I've gotten and I'm going to post the chart and the measurements.

I've been goofing around for hours and I've determined that no matter what I adjust, and to what degree, I cannot effect the primaries much. I've done it with the Spyder facing the screen as well as facing the pj.

Any guidance pointing me in the right direction would help. At this rate I will be days doing this.

Current settings on the crts are:
Red: Drive 36/G2 74
Green: Drive: 90/G2 69
Blue: Drive: 60/G2 63







Thanks!

[Gino]

You won't be able to change the primaries or secondaries on the CIE chart without an external device with CMS capabilities, or by using color corrected C-elements.

Your goal should be able to set your grey scale to D65K from 0-100IRE

[GEBrown]

And no matter how closely you get your grey scale to perfect, you will likely find that you have a hump in your blue response between IRE 30 and 70. Once you get to this point, defocus your blue, with the electronic control, a few clicks (~5) and see if that helps. Most people's eyes can't see the blue as sharply as the other colors, so you probably won't even notice it.

Search on this site for Gary Fritz's posts - he has spent a LOT of time on this issue.

Also, there is the Calibration forum over on AVS that has lots of good info.

[loribates]

Thanks guys. Doesn't look like I'll be working on it today since my husband is already down there watching football....

[Zebu Fellenz]

To fix your primaries you will need to tint the glycol in the red and green tubes or get a set of color filtered HD-144, HD-145 lenses.

Erik

[loribates]

I've already been considering one or the other of those options. I'd REALLY like to try my hand at tinting the glycol, but my fear of not being able to reinstall the tubes properly and being w/o a pj for a while will probably lead to my buying the HD144 when I can find some and afford them.

[draganm]

[loribates]

Can someone clarify for me...... I read "gain/cutoff" I saw someone ask if G2 was gain and was told definately not

What are these terms referring to. Cross reference? I've got brightness, contrast, drive and G2 for adjustments. Maybe the answer is in another thread so I'm going to keep reading....

[loribates]

Thank you very much.... it gives me a place to go..... I am out of my comfort zone with this. So, for now. I can't do anything about the primaries and secondaries. What's the best I can hope for with what I've got here? Targets I should shoot for? I saved some excel spreadsheets last night on my first couple of passes at the greyscale but I had it set to record values for xyz instead of xyY. So I don't know if seeing those would help anyone determine where I'm at and where I should go.

Also the difference in terminology between gain/cutoff/bias etc. as I posted above makes it hard for me to get anywhere with this in short order. I keep running across something that leads me needing to go search for some other part of the equation.

[loribates]

So...... the spyder sucks. Point taken, nuff said. Sit here for another couple of hours and think I'm making progress. It won't read worth a crap below 40IRE so I set the g2 on 40IRE and drive at 90IRE, get all my colors reading 100% and 6500 color temp at both, run a greyscale and get 0.00 readings at 0, 10, 20 then up from there..... can't get a gamma that's not in the 2.8-3.3 range, ugh.... no matter how high I cranked the brightness or contrast. Check my readings for color temps at 40 and 90 again, fix em back up ..... tracking's not too terribly bad throughout the range except for above and below 40 and 90, so how bad could it be, eh?

IT SUCKED. Flipped back over to the image and the skin tones were putrid green, no black detail whatsoever. So..... back to the basics..... knocked the contrast and brightness back down to 50, reset the G2 while looking at the tubes then flipped it back onto an image (ESPN HD, God help me, but the colors and clarity on that channel are awesome) so I just adjusted the drive settings by eye.
Much more suitable than the results I got from the spyder. Got most of the black detail back and the whites are Ok.

The only problem now is I'd like to eek a little more brightness out, but bumping up the contrast or brightness leaves it looking hazy.. lacking depth and blows out the whites a little. Any further suggestions or live with it?

[draganm]

[loribates]

The screen is not a bed sheet...... not optimal, but not a bed sheet. I settled in at about 96" wide on the image size.

The screen is foam board I affixed to the wall and painted ultra pure white with a pearlescent glaze mixed in per some DIY instructions I'd read over on AVS about 3 years ago when I built it. It's always done a pretty descent job. Never had any complaints with the Sony and I know this Marquee has greater light output so I just have to get my settings right.

It's really not the overall brightness but the low end that's bothering me right now. I may not be explaining what I'm seeing in terms that are correct.

I did make a little adjustment to the red drive with the white field up but unless it's drastic, I can eye it better when I have something else to look at, it helped me more to pull up the ball game on ESPN HD and get the pink out of their white pants.

[draganm]

[garyfritz]

Lori, the SpyderII isn't great, but it's not bad for the money. I can read very low IREs off my (low-gain, probably 0.9) blackout-cloth screen. And that is **CRITICAL** -- you MUST read off the screen. I did some testing last month and discovered the SpyderII is USELESS for reading a point source. Its results are all over the map if you point the sensor at the projector. But if you read off the screen, giving the sensor a large area to read, then it's very reliable. It's a good idea to make a little "baffle" (cut a TP-roll tube in half, paint one end black inside, and affix it to the sensor) so the sensor can only "see" a limited area. That way the sensor's 3-color shadow won't be in the sensor's field of vision. Also remove the LCD filter, and use "CRT" settings in HCFR.

Reading off the screen, I can do a gamma reading from IRE 0 through 100. The trick is to tell HCFR to take longer readings at low IREs. That way the 0-20 IRE readings might take 30-40 seconds but you get pretty repeatable results.

I don't know what went wrong when you got the green skin tones &etc. Were you maybe pointing the sensor at the projector? Also realize the grayscale is NOT going to affect your black levels. You should set that with your brightness control. You set grayscale just to get the colors correct, so skin tones &etc are right. And even then it won't be completely right unless your primaries are right, which on an 8500 requires HD144/145's or colored glycol. Or try the cheap gels I posted about in another of your threads.

Gary

[loribates]

Thank you. You've provided me some good links today and when I get home from work I'll read and try again, but some very important things you said just now..... I did try both ways... pointed at the pj and at the screen with the TP roll blinder on it, but I guess I was in error on a couple of other points. I left the baffle on and used the LCD settings because alot of the threads I read said that we should use the LCD setting with the baffle on.

When pointing it at the screen would it be useful to angle the tip of the TP roll blinder? The sensor is angled just enough to view the screen without reading in the shadow , but I wonder if cutting a slant tip on it to open up the side where the light source is coming in might help? My lower IRE readings (0-40 approx) were taking more than a minute to read and 0,10,20 were reading zeros.

I will give it another go tonight. My pleasure to play with the PJ while hubby is wanting to waste my precious tube hours on MNFB

[loribates]

Oh, are there retail stores where I could pick up the colorcalc filters to try or are they order only from internet? I tried the camera shops in town and nothing there... At this point, hell, I'd even try colored celophane wrap.... it's close to christmas, they'll be having blue and green cling wrap on the shelves soon

[garyfritz]

Cutting the blinder to open up the field of view to more screen might help you get faster readings. Try it and see!

There might be local shops where you can buy the filters, but if you've tried the camera shops I don't know where else to tell you to look. I got mine on ebay, seller jayplayer. See e.g. this listing -- 3 gels for $11.98 delivered. The gels he sends you are big enough to make at least 4 sets of filters. Can't beat that.

[loribates]

woo hoo! Happy Dance!!! Much better results tonight! I've still got work to do, but Gary, your suggestions above made a world of difference. Thank you very much everyone.

[loribates]

Did some further work last night. Went back through focusing and individual R/G/B electronic focus again just to tighten things up then defocused the blue since I got the "blue hump" the other night (which I was actually glad to see which meant I was at least working in the right direction) I'll do another greyscale tonight. Things are really shaping up nicely and I'm thrilled. I'm very thankful for everyones tips and suggestions.

Turns out this is a 8111, Curt musta felt sorry for me and sent me a little bit of an upgrade or else he screwed up and sent me the wrong pj and since possession is 9/10's of the law..... (hee hee) Anyway, it's got more setup options than the 8000 WOO HOO......

Anyway... my menu has "Stigmators (not installed) menu options, so I guess I'll have to manually adjust those if necessary, but here's my concern. Adjusting individual beam focus. ramping it all the way one way gives me the donut..... mid range I see TWO dots not one dot with a halo, then ramp it the other direction and I get the bright fuzzy ball. What am I seeing here with two dots? I swear I wasn't drinking at the time, but I'm thinking it's a good time to start if I'm gonna have to go play around in the "scary place" as someone called it.

[Tim in Phoenix]