Thanks Mech!

I believe your numbers, I just don't understand mine. (Not color balance, but measured light.) Could be just final curing. I didn't get around to doing measurements last night, I'll try and get to it tonight.

 

I use HCFR, Calman 5, and Babel Color. Unless I'm totally out to lunch, I believe the only time you use the diffuser is when you are taking readings directly off the PJ. I've never used the diffuser to take readings off the screen or off any material.

 

That is correct! :T

 

OK, I took some measurements again. I used Calman 5, an i1 Pro and a windowed 50% white/gray pattern.

Diamond 450 Sprayed: 4.07 fL, Rolled: 4.27 fL (Please remember I sprayed an intentionally "sandpaper" kind of finish. Stupid and unnecessary. But hey, I love it anyway!

Sherwin Williams Pro Classic Satin: 3.7 fL

Carada Brilliant White screen material: 4.28 fL

I put up a panel of the rolled 450 and panels of the other two materials against my sprayed 450 screen, and put up a 100 IRE field. I even took pictures if anyone is interested. The SW paint was very noticeably dimmer than all the other materials. The Carada definitely had a hot spot compared to the Glidden. If you moved so the Carada was right in it's hotspot, it was equal in brightness to the 450. As soon as you move about a foot, it starts appearing dimmer than the 450. If you looked very closely, you could just notice that the rolled 450 was just slightly brighter than the sprayed. Measurements showed it to be 5% brighter, on axis.

Mech, is that 5% in your error tolerance? If they average 1.0 gain, the sprayed sample could be .975 gain and the rolled 1.025 gain?

I don't remember the Carada hot spotting as bad in my last test, but there is no doubt that was happening today. But that was with a 100 IRE pattern and about double the lumens as my last test.

Conclusions:
For a white paint, the Glidden 450 blows the SW away.
The Glidden is superior to the Carada.
The Carada 1.4 gain material must have a on-axis gain of 1.0, as that is what Mech measured the Glidden at. However, it's got a good dropoff off-axis. (Good as in lots of drop-off so really it's bad.)

Is my reasoning good? Or am I missing something?

 

Mech, is that 5% in your error tolerance? If they average 1.0 gain, the sprayed sample could be .975 gain and the rolled 1.025 gain?

Which would both be a 1.0 gain. :huh: It would be very difficult to discern the difference between the two. I'm off to calibrate my pj so I'll take a look at the two samples again in a few minutes. :T

 

Now you need to throw up some of that super cheap Glidden GL9000 from HomeDepot and see how it compares

 

That's on the to do list.

 

I just looked at them under a 100% white pattern and I had my kids look as well. No one could really tell a difference except for me. It seemed like the rolled sample was just ever so slightly brighter, but when I moved them around some they seemed to match up again. How many sprayed coats and how many rolled coats did you do again? It seems like the rolled sample has more paint on the sample, which is how it should be.

 

I think it was two rolled coats on the one, and 9 VERY fine sprayed coats on the other. Your experience matches up with mine. I can barely see the 5% difference, I have to look really carefully. just for fun, I might make a negative out of the pics I took, just to see what that shows.

What I'm still having a hard time with is the comparison to the Carada Brilliant White. I looked at your screen gain page, and you've tested the Carada at 1.26 on axis gain. I have a sample that must be about 10" x 12" of that stuff, and there is no way my sample is that much higher gain than the 450. Both by eye and measuring light of off it it is very close to the Glidden if you line your eyes right up on axis. Move a foot and the 450 is visibly brighter. Move another foot and the 450 is much brighter than the Carada. I'm talking about viewing from 8 - 10 feet back, so we aren't talking many degrees. Maybe 10 or 12 degrees at the most. The further off axis you go, the dimmer the Carada gets in comparison to the 450. By 70 degrees, the Carada is no brighter than the Sherwin Williams.

What sample of the Carada BW did you measure? Would you mind checking mine if I sent it to you?

Thanks Mech!

BTW, I'll go ahead and post the pics I took later today or tomorrow.

 

I have 3 Carada samples - Brilliant White, Classic Cinema White and High Contrast Gray. You may be looking at the Classic Cinema White material. :huh:

 

Possibly? The sample came from Carada and is marked as Brilliant White, 1.4 Gain. Maybe somebody at Carada screwed up?

 

Hi Nak (and others). First post, so yay me! Finishing a basement from bare poured concrete and wouldn't you know, the first room to be worked on is the new HT.
I just picked up a gallon of the diamond 450 in velvet matte. The guy at the store wanted to "tint" it white. I mean he really, really wanted to tint it. He said he didn't have any standard white but he could add a little white pigment in to it. I told him what I was doing and just wanted the straight base, no tint. He said ok, but the coverage would probably not be very good and would actually be a little opaque, letting the base color show through. He suggested several times that I let him add some pigment to it to get to his standard white. I said the term "titanium white" was used here a few times, but he did not have a shade that matched that. It sounded like he was just going to wing it with the tint. Are you sure that what you painted was just the straight base with no tint?
Thanks

 

The base is titanium white, its not labelled as such.
All you should need is diamond velvet matte white.(PN posted somewhere around here)

 

Hey K-dub, and welcome!

Cali is right, just the base with no tint added. Used on Sintra or over a white primer you won't have any problems at all. You can spray or roll. To be honest, if you can roll well at all, this stuff really self levels in a most excellent fashion!

 

The reason the paint person wanted to add tint to the base was to make it more opaque and cover better. You made the correct decision to NOT have any white tint added as that would have made the final paint less color-neutral.

 

Thanks to all 3 of you for the quick confirmation. Ive been lurking here on and off for what seems like years while i waited to be in a position to actually build out my first FP system and it is amazing to me how helpful and supportive the members here are to each other. Glad to see my firsthand experience has been no different.

Nak, interesting you mention how well this paint levels, since your experience with rolling earlier in this thread has me considering a HVLP purchase even though I have no experience spraying. Is the sandpaper finish you achieved difficult to do? It sounds like a happy accident, but I think it may be a key to your percieved image quality.
The pj I seem to have settled on is also the 5020, and if I can get my image to look half as good as your screen shots I don't think I'll ever leave that room. I figure I'll just do exactly what you did (9 coats seems a bit OCD to me, but I just keep going back to those pictures you took). I'll be mounting the projector about 14 to 15 feet back from the screen, which will be somewhere between 120" - 130" diagonal, so I expect it to be plenty bright. I also keep wondering how much difference that LPE filter makes, because it doesn't look like there is much chance of me getting my hands on one of those any time soon.

 

I don't have any evidence that the "sandpaper" finish I got helped the picture at all. It's certainly possible, but there's no knowing at this point. You'd have to do a screen half and half I think to really know, or at least put up a large sample on one part of the screen. Some day I may do that... There is however a very real con to having a finish like this. I don't think there is any way at all to clean it. Some day I may have to try, but until then, I doubt you could clean it and have it look good. Plus, the rolled sample is a bit brighter. I would recommend either rolling or spraying to achieve a normal, smooth finish. I'm not screwing with mine because I love the picture right now. It may not be any better than a normal finish, but it's so good that I don't care at this point. It could be just as good with a normal, smooth finish, but why screw with success? At least until I need to clean it.

The LPE filter allows you to get around 1100 - 1200 color correct lumens in ECO lamp mode. If you don't need the output, you're better off without the filter. Currently, I'm not using mine because I have a freak PJ it seems. I'm getting around 900 lumens in ECO THX mode. Shouldn't be possible, but it looks that bright and I measured it at that level.I went through 5 or 6 PJs to get a good one, and none of the others were anywhere close to this bright. Go figure. My lamp will probably explode at some point. :huh:

 

I was just going to ask if anyone has cleaned their screen.....

So any recommendations? its been over a year here...I wouldnt mind wiping it off "safely"

 

I guess cleaning a screen would depend on just how dirty it was. I think in most cases, which should only remove any dust that has settled or been attracted to the screen, a simple "feather duster" could be used with no fear of damaging the screen surface.

Feather dusters have a large head of very soft feathers and look something like this:

Natural feathers

Synthetic feathers

Cleaning screens that have worse problems such as crayon marks or food stains can be more problematic and a lot depends on the quality and type of the paint used to make them.


A "sandpaper finish" on a screen, assuming it's very fine, would help the screen be more of a perfect Lambertian reflector which would make the screen appear to be the same brightness no matter what angle one viewed it from. This is usually the best type of screen if you have the lumens for it.

 

The Glidden GL9000 from HomeDepot is it the same paint as the Diamond 450.

 

I'm a bit confused by this, it is presented as a statement, but contains the syntax of a question so I'm assuming something got left out or twisted around somewhere. No problem - happens to the best of us.

All I can say about the matter is that my sample of Glidden GLN9000 has virtually the same reflectance and color characteristics of the sample of Glidden Diamond 450 that was sent to me. They appear to be the same.

 

Harpmaker,
Thanks for the reply.

 

Have anyone else painted a Diamond 450 screen?

This will most likely be my next screen paint.