Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector Calibration and Settings
The Home Cinema 3010 projector engineering sample we received was calibrated by Mike. When the second, production projector arrived, I tried Mike's settings and they still looked good, give or take minor lamp variations. As a result, we have published Mike's settings below, and decided not to do a fresh calibration on the production projector.Our calibrations, including the Epson Home Cinema 3010, are normally limited to a grayscale calibration, along with brightness, contrast, color saturation, tint (where applicable), etc. Only in very special circumstances will we calibrate the individual colors, in which case we discuss why.
10/18/2011 - Art Feierman
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Let's take a look at the numbers:
Epson Home Cinema 3010 Color Temperature
Before we provide our settings, let's see what we started out with: Pre calibration, these are the color temperatures over the grayscale range:
Color Temp over IRE Range (Pre calibration, best mode - Cinema):
Cinema Cinema (in Eco lamp)
30 IRE – 5873 6741
50 IRE – 6036 6836
80 IRE – 6128 6815
100 IRE – 6166 6849
A quick fix for the low / warm temp in Cinema mode at full lamp, is to adjust the color temp from its default 6500K to 7000K. That makes a real improvement, short of a real calibration.
Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE:
Dynamic= 1925 @ 6852
Living Room= 1602 @ 7633
Natural= 1402 @ 6155, 923 @ 6912 in Eco lamp mode (default)
Cinema= 1402 @ 6166, 923 @ 6849 in Eco lamp mode (default)
Auto= 923 @ 6704
I pretty much ignored the Auto mode. I like to know where I am, mode wise. Some folks will be perfectly happy using it.Most movies cause it to drop into Cinema mode, etc. Besides, I like the Living Room mode, the way I have it set up, a lot better than Dynamic, and it's not that much less bright. I mean I still have plenty of brightness when desired or needed.
Epson Home Cinema 3010 Basic Settings
In addition to calibrating Red Green and Blue for a correct grayscale balance (6500K), there are a number of other settings that come into play. Typically Contrast and Brightness (white balance and black balance), need to be done first. Color saturation and gamma also need adjustment. In the case of this Epson most of these default settings were fairly close to ideal.
Settings for measurements (default values are in parenthesis):
Cinema Dynamic Living Room Natural
Contrast = (0) 0 0 -1 0
Brightness= (0) 0 0 2 1
Color Saturation= (0 for all)
Tint= (0 for all)
Color Temp (default)= 6500 6500 7500 6500
Auto Iris is on Normal by default.
All other settings at default (untouched)
Auto picture mode has none of the above adjustable settings as it uses its light sensor to switch to whatever picture mode works with the ambient light conditions.
Zoom at mid range and Lamp mode on Normal unless noted otherwise.
Epson Home Cinema 3010 Post Calibration Grayscale: User Mode
Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration): User
Calibrated color temps, 20 – 100 IRE:
User 1
20 IRE = 6506
30 IRE = 6421
40 IRE = 6436
50 IRE = 6508
60 IRE = 6536
70 IRE = 6570
80 IRE = 6551
90 IRE = 6578
100 IRE = 6271
Average gamma = 2.27
Home Cinema 3010 RGB Settings
Home Cinema 3010 Post Calibration settings:
Cinema (on User 1) Quick Cal of Dynamic (on User 2)
Offset R = -3 R= 0
G = 0 G= 0
B = 8 B= 0
Gain R = -1 R= 0
G = 0 G= -10
B = 3 B= 0
Color Saturation: -5 0
Tint: 0 0
Gamma: 2.4 2.4
Mike provided these additional notes, regarding the ability to calibrate different settings, limitations, etc.:
Dynamic is high in green, low in red at 100 IRE, despite the good color temp shown on the previous page. Knocking green down helps, but doesn’t end up with much more in the way of lumens than Living Room, which looks better.
Ultimately, the Home Cinema 3010 produces reasonably good color, even better if calibrated. It should prove more than satisfactory for the Home Cinema 3010's target market, and even please many enthusiasts on a reasonable budget.
NEXT: Recommended projector screens for the Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector