Cream&Sugar - an N9 reflective screen mix.

**Harpmaker** · **03-05-09, 12:48 PM**

Quote:

Quantum wrote:

Why not SW Luminous White tinted to BB for BW? It has those mica and quartz flecks, which may contribute to gain?

Good question! I know that LW was tried with the Henry 558 aluminum paint (that's why I had a gallon), but I don't recall LW being tinted BB and used with AAA-F.

I now recall that people have had problems getting things properly color-matched at SW stores. A potential problem is that I don't think SW uses LW as a white base for matching colors, it is a "stock white" and may be like asking them to match a color using 'Antique White' as a base; know what I mean? It would be something to look into however.

**str8desifer** · **03-11-09, 05:50 PM**

Hey harp,

When you say 2:1 ratio, do you mean two quarts of Luminous White and one quart of Craft Smart Metallic Silver?

Thanks

**Harpmaker** · **03-11-09, 06:17 PM**

Hi str8desifer,

Welcome to the Shack!

Yes, the 2:1 ratio LW to CSMS means 2 parts LW to 1 part CSMS; a part can be an ounce, quart, gallon or whatever.

As a rough estimate of how much paint you will need to paint your screen, figure about 1 fluid ounce per square foot of screen. Simply multiply the length of your screen in inches by the height in inches and divide the result by 144 to convert from square inches to square feet.

**str8desifer** · **03-11-09, 07:50 PM**

Thanks for the reply Harp. That pretty much answers my question. Can i just mix the two quarts with the one quart and save the rest for later? As you can see i'm not much into measuring. That's what i did a while ago with behr silver screen and behr white opal pearlescent 2:1, and still looks pretty good. In your opinion would the C & S look better? I have a light controlled room with a samsung 710ae 720p projector. Wall screen is 114".
Thanks again

**Harpmaker** · **03-11-09, 10:54 PM**

Quote:

str8desifer wrote:

Thanks for the reply Harp. That pretty much answers my question. Can i just mix the two quarts with the one quart and save the rest for later? As you can see i'm not much into measuring. That's what i did a while ago with behr silver screen and behr white opal pearlescent 2:1, and still looks pretty good. In your opinion would the C & S look better? I have a light controlled room with a samsung 710ae 720p projector. Wall screen is 114".
Thanks again

Yes, you could simply mix the three quarts of paint together and store what you don't use.

Using the 1 fluid ounce of paint per square foot formula I get you needing about 38.5 ounces of mix for your screen. A simple mix that wouldn't have so much paint left over would be to use 1 quart of LW and add 16 ounces of CSMS to it. That would be one quart of LW and one 16 ounce bottle of CSMS for a total of 48 ounces of C&S. You could store the left-over C&S in the CSMS bottle.

As for C&S being "better" than your current screen, that I can't say because ultimately the best screen comes down to user-preference. I, personally, like a darker screen because my PJ needs all the help it can get when it comes to contrast.

The calculator at PJCentral shows you having about 17 fL. brightness at the screen; this should be bright enough to use BW or a regular N8 gray paint. I'm guessing that your current mix is about N8.3. If you would move to a C&S screen you will be going to an N9, which is a good bit lighter. My guess is that you would be losing some perceived contrast and ambient light performance if you switch to C&S, but I can't be sure because I have never seen your mix and I'm trying to guess it's attributes from the constituent parts so I could be wrong.

If you think your current screen is too dark then try C&S. I would recommend priming your screen with a white primer before applying the C&S. If you don't like the C&S, I assume to have more of your current mix in storage and it should be OK to just paint over the C&S without priming again.

And you are certainly welcome. We try to help folks here.

**biggeley** · **03-20-09, 04:26 PM**

Have you tried any experimentation with adding poly to the mix? I have some leftover Minwax Satin Poly from my neutral gray/poly screen that I could throw into the mix... Interested in trying something new from my n8.5 gray/poly screen...

Dave

**Harpmaker** · **03-20-09, 06:41 PM**

Hi Dave,

Welcome to the Shack!

Nope, we haven't experimented with adding water-based polyurethane to either C&S or BW yet, but it's on the to-do list. We do know that it doesn't work well as a top-coat for a number of reasons, but it might perform differently when it's part of the mix.

From a chemistry standpoint, I would rather try and find an acrylic clear medium to add to the screen mix rather than a polyurethane. I know folks have been adding "poly" to their mixes for a long time, but the poly doesn't actually become part of the liquid paint solution, but rather stays separate and is a physical mixture (that can and will separate if let stand in the container after mixing). An acrylic medium will actually combine with the latex or acrylic paint. Another plus is that many of these mediums are matte instead of satin and so would add less gloss when used in a mix.

**cdcstl** · **03-21-09, 05:51 PM**

Harp
I currently have a C&S screen and am getting a projector that has less lumens then my current one. After reading some old posts here and at AVS, I picked up some Rosco White White. Do you have any guess what would happen if I use this as a base? I think I read that the Rosco is like DW with a 1.3 gain. You think this would make a higher gain N9 than the current C&S?

**Harpmaker** · **03-21-09, 08:24 PM**

Quote:

cdcstl wrote:

Harp
I currently have a C&S screen and am getting a projector that has less lumens then my current one. After reading some old posts here and at AVS, I picked up some Rosco White White. Do you have any guess what would happen if I use this as a base? I think I read that the Rosco is like DW with a 1.3 gain. You think this would make a higher gain N9 than the current C&S?

No I don't since I have never used or tested the Rosco paints. If it is a brighter white than the Sherwin-Williams Luminous White then the resulting C&S mix would almost certainly be brighter as well, but I don't know how neutral the color would be. I know that regular white paints like Valspar Ultra Premium Enamel and Behr #1050 are a bit on the blue side (as shown on the first page of this thread).

If you decide to experiment with making C&S with the Rosco paint, I would appreciate samples of the Rosco White and the resulting C&S mix. If you would be willing to send me samples of these, PM me for my address.

**Philnick** · **04-02-09, 10:06 PM**

Hi, guys!

It's been a while since I posted here. I've been talking up my C&S (#1) screen over at AV Science Forum, where I hang out a lot, in the thread relating to my projector, a Panasonic PT-AE2000, a very nice 1080p LCD unit that hides the pixel grid by using a grid-scribed sheet in front of each color panel. That spreads the light from each pixel halfway into the gap between pixels, where it meets the light spread from the adjacent pixel. You can still see the pixel grid when you stand right at the screen - it's not black, just slightly dimmer - so it can be used for focusing using the remote. Once you're a few feet away from the screen, the grid's essentially invisible - with no loss in sharpness. Calibration with the DVE Blu-ray disk led me to slightly boost the reds, but otherwise leave the stock "Color 1" profile alone.

I'm very happy with C&S #1. Now that I've got a Blu-ray player, Panasonic's BD-50, driving the setup, the image on my screen is wonderful. I got that model because it internally decodes the lossless audio formats and feeds them out via six RCA jacks to my Yamaha receiver's multichannel input. My Yamaha's so old it doesn't even have an HDMI jack! I switch the image input using the projector's remote and the audio input at the amp. This would let me watch The Wizard of Oz with the sound coming from my SACD of Dark Side of the Moon! (You couldn't do that with an ohh-so-convenient single-cable HDMI setup that would always tie the audio and video together from the same source.) Besides, the Yamaha's smart enough to apply its channel balance and speaker distance time delay settings to the multichannel inputs as well as the other inputs, so I only have to calibrate one device.

I had to buy a gallon of SW LW when I made up the mix last summer, but that means I've got C&S left over to fix whatever mishaps befall my screen - like the time one of the supports I was mounting for a shelf to put the center channel speaker up over the screen spun out of my hand and took a chunk out of the screenwall. I just spackled it and applied some more C&S. Problem solved.

My screen is a little more than 9 1/2' wide by 5 1/3' tall. I keep my projector's lens set to maximum size to fill the screen at 16:9, which results in all formats except 1.33:1 being 9 1/2' wide. 1.33:1 uses the full screen height but is only about 7' wide. I sit "too close" - one screen width away - in my mini-IMAX, because I love the immersive experience.

One thing I really like about the BD50 is that it's very smart when it comes to figuring out the aspect ratios of standard DVDs it upscales - it puts my Denon 2910 to shame in that respect. I hate to have to fiddle with configuration menus just to watch movies. Besides, I'd rather save the 2910 for playing SACDs and DVD-Audio disks to keep it alive longer. They share the receiver's 5.1 multichannel input by means of a passive push-button switchbox designed for switching component video, composite video, and stereo sound - six RCA jacks with no electronics, just switches. Sometimes simpler and cheaper is better!

I'm toying with applying a second coat of C&S because of a few irregular areas where I painted over spackle (the first coat was put on over the standard flat white wall paint I'd applied six years before), but given the record of dust specks infecting my model of projector, I've banned anything that might put particulate matter into the air. I don't even use the microwave to make popcorn down there any more! (I'm glad I used a roller, not a sprayer, to apply the paint.) Fortunately, the ceiling is also drywall - no acoustic paneling to shed dust when the sound gets loud.

I just found that posting a link at AVS Forum to this site was automatically asterisked out - I'm sending their sysop an email asking that they put it back, pretty please. If you know those guys, maybe you can arrange an exception to each other's spam filtering!

Sorry if I'm rambling, but it's been quite a while since I've been here!

**wbassett** · **04-03-09, 01:41 AM**

To be straight to the point and put it simple... that ain't gonna ever happen.

AVS doesn't want any links here. In fact recently an AVS member tried posting a new thread about the newest Black Widow screen, the Scorpion, and the entire thread was deleted. Why, I honestly don't know. But suffice to say AVS does not allow any links to HTS at all. They tend to condemn us over there and call us names, but we still plug away and strive at making the best DIY screens available as well as doing honest commercial screen reviews. They may not like us, but maybe that is actually a badge of honor? Facts and data as well as actual research will always trump hearsay and made up science. I will say in the end, it's the image on the screen that really matters, but again, we have more than proved ourselves in that arena too.

We present the facts. Maybe they are boring, but people do like to see specs and stats over claims. We even have a couple of very respectable universities that agree with us and our stats and specs. Even some commercial screens are interested in our reviews and testing data, and even for new screens that nobody in the public have seen yet. In addition to that, I do believe we have the only DIY screen that is currently being used by a commercial flight school for their flight simulator screens. That's pretty impressive if I do say so myself! We will shoot fair and be honest. If it works, we'll tell people it works well. If there are problems with something, we will also tell people about that.

We've seen the 'best of the best', both commercial and DIY. Even with stating that, none of us here will dictate, demand, or bully anyone into going with one screen option over another. Instead we will interview a person and find out what they are expecting as well as what their room layout and equipment is and then we'll make a recommendation. To some it may be surprising because depending on their situation, we may recommend a DIY screen, or recommend a commercial screen. In that sense we are very different than 'the other site'.

Depending on a person's budget, setup, equipment and expectations... we may offer up advice that is different from one person to another. Whenever someone tries to tell you 'their' application is best for all... well, I am a huge movie buff and to make a quote from The Fly... "Be afraid... very afraid."

**clark17** · **04-03-09, 11:43 PM**

Quote:

Philnick wrote:

I just found that posting a link at AVS Forum to this site was automatically asterisked out - I'm sending their sysop an email asking that they put it back, pretty please. If you know those guys, maybe you can arrange an exception to each other's spam filtering!

Sorry if I'm rambling, but it's been quite a while since I've been here!

Yes, I couldn't even send a link to Scorpion thread to one of the AVS members via PM

Quote:

wbassett wrote:

To be straight to the point and put it simple... that ain't gonna ever happen.

Too be honest most of the people looking for best DIY solutions, do not want to be part of this - 'whatever it is' between AVS vs. HTS. I think both sides could and should coexist together, even if they take different approach to test, measure or make screens. For instance I've read somewhere on AVS (between the lines) about C&S (I don't think there is a related thread about it), and thanks to google I was able to find this site and with help from Harpmaker and Mech I made my first ever C&S#2 batch along with Scorpion N8. If it wasn't for those three guys and you wbassett of course

I would be still displaying my PJ onto my off white wall..... So blocking one site from another site, IMHO is very childish and pointless and at the end it doesn't affect any conflicting parties, but people looking for best available DIY solutions ...

**wbassett** · **04-04-09, 12:45 AM**

Very true. I was just trying to explain why, not justify it. We don't have any hard set rules as far as posting links to AVS, we just chose not to. But we won't remove any links a person posts.

It is a shame that people get caught up in the drama. We used to post things over there just to try and help people and offer up some alternatives, but every time we do it turns into a circus, so we just decided not to bother anymore. I think the perception is that we are trying to 'troll' for members, and honestly that is not the case. Like I said, it was an honest feeling of trying to be helpful. Like you just said yourself, a simple Google search and HTS is easy to find.

Some say we are 'ruining the fun of DIY' and that certainly is not the intent. In fact I would say that 98-99% of the people that come to forums like these are looking for advice, not a 'hobby'. Actually if anything I personally am trying my hardest to legitimize DIY as a very viable option and one that works just as well as screens costing thousands more. Again I am not putting down the commercial companies at all. This just gives a person another set of options. Probably one of the best aspects of DIY is that a person can audition several different types of screens, White, Light Gray, all the way to very Dark Grays with very little expense on their part. Then they can purchase a commercial screen with a high degree of confidence. Or, they just may opt to stay with the DIY method, but in the end we leave that decision totally up to the individual.

Clark, I personally don't care if you use any screen I developed or was part of developing, or any other DIY screen. In fact it's totally possible that after doing the interview and survey process of what you're looking for I may have even recommended a commercial screen... the bottom line is that you walk away happy, and each and every time you fire up your projector you have a smile on your face!

**wbassett** · **04-04-09, 01:53 AM**

We've strayed from the topic, and I am probably mostly at fault for that and I apologize... this is a sticky thread and really needs to stay on topic, and that is C&S!

**doug goldberg** · **04-05-09, 05:05 PM**

Bill, how does C&S track a black body as you showed with BW. Do you expect it to be as neutral?

**wbassett** · **04-05-09, 08:31 PM**

Cream&Sugar is dead bang neutral. Like BW, it's a bullseye!

**Philnick** · **04-05-09, 09:29 PM**

One of the things I was very pleased about Cream&Sugar #1 when watching political speeches over high definition cable was the clear delineation of different shades of black, such as the windscreen on a microphone being clearly visible against a black suit or tie.

By the way, high definition television is going to force set designers to raise their game - the broadcast concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial right before the inauguration had faux background pillars and granite walls that were clearly not real (including some that were apparently on casters, and rolled back and forth)!

**Harpmaker** · **04-05-09, 11:49 PM**

Thanks for that HD report on C&S Phil.

One of the things about a truly neutral screen is that it doesn't get in the way of the image the projector is designed to produce. By that I mean that you don't have to mess with adjusting the PJ to get decent color. Perhaps I have this wrong, but I think the more you have to adjust a PJ away from D65 (what it's set for at the factory) to compensate for an off-color screen, the worse the image gets, if only marginally.

**Philnick** · **04-06-09, 01:28 AM**

Quote:

Harpmaker wrote:

Thanks for that HD report on C&S Phil.

One of the things about a truly neutral screen is that it doesn't get in the way of the image the projector is designed to produce. By that I mean that you don't have to mess with adjusting the PJ to get decent color. Perhaps I have this wrong, but I think the more you have to adjust a PJ away from D65 (what it's set for at the factory) to compensate for an off-color screen, the worse the image gets, if only marginally.

True, but then what do we make of all of the presets that the projectors come with? It's confusing enough that my projector (the Panasonic PT-AE2000) comes with 7-Count'Em-7 preset color settings: "Normal" "Dynamic" "Color1" "Color2" and "Cinema1" "Cinema2" and "Cinema3!"

Color1 is the D65 setting, which I tweaked only a little, giving it a "teense" more red while looking through the Blu-ray DVE's color filters at its test pattern, to make all the colors equally bright.

So I looked at DVE's hi-def footage of a space shuttle launch. It looked so photographically-accurate that I was actually a little disappointed. I wanted more "punch" to the color!

Then I put on the Blu-ray of the 2007 version of "Hairspray" - one of my favorites, a "feel-good" musical about the fight for integration in Baltimore in the early 1960s. The set and costumes for the "Corny Collins Show" - the daily dance show that was the center of the film's battle - were so eye-poppingly colorful that I realized that I had done my job correctly, creating an undistorted reproduction of whatever imagery the director and cinematographer decided to present.

**wbassett** · **04-06-09, 09:41 AM**

A lot of people don't always totally like a full ISF calibration. Although it is how the image was intended to be seen. I know a lot of people that end up turning the brightness up some. I think that's because people are too used to seeing HDTV's in the showroom that are cranked up and way over saturated.

Those presets are mainly a quick and down and dirty way for a person to select different setups, mainly brightness. My PJ has user defined settings, and I believe most projectors now days have them. What I do is to have one setting fully calibrated, and then tweak the others, mainly for things like daytime viewing or when some lights are on. One thing though is that I don't mess with the color settings once they are dialed in.

It sounds like you set your system up pretty good though! Congrats!

**DavidHawke** · **07-10-09, 05:25 PM**

Did you ever get around to trying Cream & Sugar with the Valspar base? Just curious, as I have alot of Valspar Flat white enamel on hand... and the Sherwin Williams LW is really pricey at $32 per Gallon.

**Harpmaker** · **07-10-09, 07:33 PM**

Quote:

DavidHawke wrote:

Did you ever get around to trying Cream & Sugar with the Valspar base? Just curious, as I have alot of Valspar Flat white enamel on hand... and the Sherwin Williams LW is really pricey at $32 per Gallon.

I know what you mean about Luminous White being on the expensive side, especially if you only need a quart. Some Sherwin-Williams stores sell LW by the quart and some don't... haven't really figured that one out yet.

C&S #2 and C&S #3 mixes were developed just because of this. The most generic of them is C&S #2. Check here for the formula. As stated, this formula should work with most "ultra white" paints (meaning at least those of Valspar and Behr, and probably others).

I did find a tint for Valspar Ultra Premium Enamel to make it the equivalent of True Value "Refinement" so it could be used instead of "Refinement", but I don't have it at hand. I'll look it up and post it here as an addendum.

The only difference between C&S #2 and C&S #3 is the base paint is very lightly tinted for C&S #3 so that only Craft Smart Metallic Silver needs to be used. For C&S #2 all three Craft Smart metallics (silver, gold and bronze) need to be used to come out neutral.

**DavidHawke** · **07-11-09, 02:01 PM**

Thanks! Please let me know as soon as you find the Valspar tint equivalent of "Refinement".

**Harpmaker** · **07-12-09, 01:35 PM**

Rather than add this info as an addendum to a previous post, I'll put it here.

Another base paint to use to make C&S #3 is Valspar Ultra Premium Enamel flat tinted with the following formula:
Using Base 1
107 0.5
116 0.5
113 24

Adding 16 fl. oz. of Craft Smart metallic Silver to a quart of this paint will produce a mix having a Spectral Reflectance like this:

**DavidHawke** · **07-13-09, 10:24 AM**

Thanks for taking the time to dig this up for me! You're the man! Please clarify a few things for me...

Is the manual mix formula you have shown, for a quart or a gallon?

Is the reflectivity axis on the right from 0-100, the same as "gain"? Is is fair to say that Cream & Sugar has gain of about .75 across most of the spectrum? Or is gain an entirely different reading than "reflectivity"?

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