Dicentra/Laptop/Optoma EX615 settings, updated Nov 2012

Following comments by one of our judges and some members that our projector setting may be too bright, I experimented with both projector and laptop video card settings and made the following small alterations:

1.Laptop primary display should be Monitor Optoma when it is plugged in. [Right click on desktop/Graphics Properties…]  This ensures the sRGB IEC color profile is used rather than any Samsung profile designed for the in-built laptop display.

2.Optoma Menu “Display” set to “User 2“: Brightness reduced from 50 (default) to 48 (any more reduction upsets the effective gamma and shadow tones when viewed in a darkened room); Degamma (advanced) changed from “Film” to “PC“, again ensuring sRGB/IEC color profile.

3.Our version of DiCentra on the club laptop now has a competition entitled “Test Cards“. Running this loads both the SCC Test Card (monochrome) and the sRGB Colour Test JPG, thus avoiding using other software (e.g. Photoshop or Faststone) to display on the projector which may employ different colour management routines.

At the time of writing, the DiCentra software is at revision 3.15.176 – if you are upgrading the version on your own machine from a much earlier version, note you will have to uninstall/re-install: you should not have to re-install the SCC licence.

As a point of interest, it is possible to copy the sRGB Colour Test jpg onto a camera card so it can be viewed directly on camera.  Using a high-end camera viewed in dim daylight (not sunny) conditions, this is likely to be the most accurate rendition that can be easily used for comparison and which totally avoids errors due to computers, software, printers, papers, and inks, each with all their numerous obscure settings.  If we get the opportunity, we will experiment with using a colour profiler with the projector and laptop to see how this compares.

Chris W