'Pigment' Free Gray- Initial Development and Testing

[mechman]

This is a comparison of Luminous White/Dice 4:1 and True Value Winter Mountain. The LW/Dice is on the left in all the shots.


Equipment

Mitsubishi HC3000 projector
Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player
Olympus Evolt E-500 Camera

Camera Settings

Camera is set up on a tripod and a remote is used to take the pictures.
ISO 100
Shutter Speed and f-stop are set to automatic
White Balance achieved with a WhiBal card



The room is almost completely dark for all shots. I had the back cans dimmed to about 10% - just barely on.

Some Data

I was originally planning on posting images of the screen captures from HCFR here. That will have to wait until Smokey Joe gives me the A-OK!

LW/Dice 4:1

RGB 189 192 193
Color Temp 6688
L*ab 77.6 -1.13 0.99
xyY 0.31 0.33 52.5

TV Winter Mountain

RGB 200 201 201
Color Temp 6545
L*ab 80.9 -0.45 -0.04
xyY 0.312 0.329 58.3

[mechman]

LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring

[mechman]

Cars

[mechman]

The Ant Bully

[mechman]

Happy Feet

[mechman]

Bugs! A Rainforest Adventure

[mechman]

Conclusions

This one was my favorite. I know it's not absolutely dead on neutral but to me it had great whites while maintaining excellent blacks. And it appears to have a viewing cone in the 120 degree range.






mech

[mechman]

This thread contains images of a comparison between Sherwin Williams Gray Screen and Winter Mist/Dice 5:1. The Gray Screen panel is on the left in all shots.

Equipment

Mitsubishi HC3000 projector
Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player
Olympus Evolt E-500 Camera

Camera Settings

Camera is set up on a tripod and a remote is used to take the pictures.
ISO 100
Shutter Speed and f-stop are set to automatic
White Balance achieved with a WhiBal card



The room is almost completely dark for all shots. I had the back cans dimmed to about 10% - just barely on.

Some Data

I was originally planning on posting images of the screen captures from HCFR here. That will have to wait until Smokey Joe gives me the A-OK!

Winter Mist/Dice 5:1

RGB 188 190 188
Color Temp 6491
L*ab 76.8 -0.96 1.0
xyY 0.31 0.33 51.2

Sherwin Williams Gray Screen

RGB 199 203 203
Color Temp 6671
L*ab 81.31 -1.42 -0.45
xyY 0.31 0.33 59.0

[mechman]

LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring





What you should really be noticing here is that Dice is a darker mix and yet has whiter whites than Gray Screen. Such as here:



If you look at the sky as well you'll notice that Gray Screen does a much better job at colors than my FG screen in the background. And Dice does better than both!

As for blacks, Dice does it as well if not better than the others. It's hard to get a good picture comparing blacks but this one shows that they appear to be equal. They are close but there is an edge to Dice.



Off axis shot



Skin tones and detail go to Dice:

[mechman]

Cars





What I tried to show with this shot was that there was more detail and, as much as I hate using this word, 'pop' in the dice panel. Once everything gets compressed into a jpg though...



This ~15degree off-axis shot shows the better blacks and better colors of Dice!

[mechman]

The Ant Bully



These were for showing of the afore mentioned attributes! Plus I loved Clarence's shot of that wasp and had to see how it would look here!

[mechman]

Happy Feet

[mechman]

Bugs! A Rainforest Adventure

[mechman]

This will have a UPW 3:1 panel in it as well as a Luminous White 3:1. For some reason Dice did not mix well with UPW. You can see for yourself when I get the data up here. I thought it would as both LW and UPW are pretty similar...

There are a few LOTR shots with all three panels in them. The LW3:1 would be on the left throughout, the UPW3:1 to the right when there are three panels, and the TV Winter Mountain would be the middle panel when there are three and on the right otherwise.

Equipment

Mitsubishi HC3000 projector
Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player
Olympus Evolt E-500 Camera

Camera Settings

Camera is set up on a tripod and a remote is used to take the pictures.
ISO 100
Shutter Speed and f-stop are set to automatic
White Balance achieved with a WhiBal card



The room is almost completely dark for all shots. I had the back cans dimmed to about 10% - just barely on.

Some Data

I was originally planning on posting images of the screen captures from HCFR here. That will have to wait until Smokey Joe gives me the A-OK!

Luminous White/Dice 3:1

RGB 175 178 175
Color Temp Bill and/or Jim - calculate this one out for me and put it here!!
L*ab 72.2 -1.3 1.07
xyY 0.313 0.333 44


TV Winter Mountain

RGB 200 201 201
Color Temp 6545
L*ab 80.9 -0.45 -0.04
xyY 0.312 0.329 58.3


Behr UPW1050/Dice 3:1

RGB 182 187 190
Color Temp Bill and/or Jim - calculate this one out for me and put it here!!
L*ab 75.7 -1.34 -1.84
xyY 0.307 0.326 49.4

[mechman]

LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring

[mechman]

Cars

[mechman]

The Ant Bully

[mechman]

Happy Feet

[mechman]

Bugs! A Rainforest Adventure

[electronbee]

I'll have some "commercial" screen paint leftovers that I can provide as a reference for you guys. And, I will gladly demo any samples you guys got. I remember on the last Friday night chat that I was supposed to get in contact with mech? Man, I was fairly hopped up (120 minute of hops in a beer that has 20% ABV) so I don't recall that one.

eb

[wbassett]

We'd be happy to test any samples you have for our master database, but we try to stay away from comparing commercial screens to DIY screens. I know a lot of people want that and its been done, but seeing this forum supports both commercial and DIY we don't want to favor one over the other. In all the side by side comparisons and reviews we've done, the upper end commercial screens still have the edge when it comes to performance. For some of the third party and more generic screens out there, or the BOC sold on ebay as screen material... there are DIY options that perform better than those.

In fact I recommend commercial screens almost as often as DIY. It all depends on what the person is looking for and their budget. And then there are some people that quite frankly are not interested in DIY in the least. Some see it as inferior even though it's not- however they do have the right to their opinion, and others either don't want to bother with the time and work needed to build a screen themself, or they just may not have the skills and acknowledge that.

[mechman]

Conclusions

Winter Mist/Dice 5:1 is one of the winners in my book. It will be a tough choice for me as to which formulation I'll use to paint my screen. Better color, better image quality, better whites, and slightly better blacks are what you're getting here.

When will we "let the cat out of the bag"? With all the patent discussion going on here I think some of you can understand why we chose not to disclose it early on! Some folks watch these forums looking for ideas not of their own. All I can say is soon. We'd like to get something back from the beta testers first.

[jr1414]

Just curious, are you also considering a top coat for this, or is this with the top coat applied already?

[mechman]

No. No topcoat. Behr Clear Matte Poly causes a color shift and not enough testing has been done on others yet. We did have a thread regarding a study of clears but no conclusions have been reported yet. Sooner or later I'd love to do a bunch of measurements of clears. But unfortunately I cannot find any matte clears where I'm at outside of the Behr product.

I have mixed up 2oz of the Dice with a quart of Behr Clear Matte Poly and attempted to roll it out using the prescribed method. The results were disappointing at best. And that's not image quality wise, that's how the topcoat looked after being applied. A lot of folks are using a pearl topcoat right now. The pearl (mica) is whitish to clear in color if I recall correctly. I attempted this with an aluminum product which is grayish/aluminum colored. It really shows what happens when you try to roll this kind of thing out! I intend to post pictures of it eventually. In my mind this would be a spray only alternative!!

mech

[mechman]

Conclusions

Take a look at these shots:



Better colors. Better whites. But...



It takes a slight hit at 15 to 20 degrees.

Here's a sequence of 0, 15-20, and 50-60 degrees off axis.





The LW/Dice and the UPW/Dice take quite the hit when moving off axis. And in my opinion, the blacks are no better than the 4:1 and the 5:1 mixes. Therefore at this time I wouldn't recommend this right now.


mech