Sony VPL-HW50ES Projector - Performance 2

Ideally projectors should be calibrated to D65, basically 6500 degrees Kelvin.  Below you see two modes color temps listed, both in the low 7000 temperature range.  At 7000K you are going to be just a touch thin on reds.  At 7300, even more so, but still pretty slight.  You want to observe a color temperative that is obviously quite thin on reds, you are probably looking at a color temp of 8500K or higher.  In other words 7000K is pretty close, but still can definitely be improved upon.

As one calibrator expressed to me a few years ago, When he comes and calibrates a projector that starts out pretty good around 7000K (across the brightness rage), and then shows the client the finished calibration at 6500K, he often gets a hard time from them.

Why?  Because pre-calibration if that projector already looked pretty good, and after calibration it only looked a little better, then the person whose spent $400 - $500 on a professional calibrator might be expecting something more dramatic.  I'm talking along the lines of:  "wow - that's a huge difference".

As you can see, the Cinema 1 mode was the best "right out of the box" without adjustment. It's a trifle on the cool side, just a touch thin on red. Cinema 3, was cooler still, so Mike based his D65 calibration on Cinema 1.

Mike calibrated and came up with the results below which he placed in User mode.

Mike calibrated and came up with the results below which he placed in User mode.

That's about a 400K shift of temperature over the range.  but other than the very slight coolness of white (100 IRE, at 6804K, all the other numbers are within a range of only 121K. Pretty tight.

Next:  Let's take a look at how all these different modes look.  There is a shot of each below.  User is after Mike's calibration.  Others were really only adjusted for correct brightness, contrast, etc., and Sony's almost dead on, on almost all of those settings.  In fact that's one of Sony's big "things":  Out of the box performance.