Light level adjustment range in Christie/NEC lasers

[Antti Näyhä]

Unless I’m mistaken, Barco projectors allow a generous light level adjustment range of 20 to 100 percent across the whole Series 4 range. Since I don’t have immediate access to Christie or NEC laser projectors, and I can’t seem to find the info in their spec sheets or manuals: I was wondering what’s their minimum light level setting, and does it vary between models (phosphor vs. RGB)?

I’m thinking of over-speccing a new projector for a venue which could use some extra brightness in some situations (mainly laptop presentations where the house lights are set to full brightness). At the same time, I’m trying not to exceed the DCI maximum brightness of 17 fL for the regular Flat preset while the projector is still new.

[Steve Guttag]

NEC is 30%-100%. I don't recall the minimum on Christie. The trick with diming lasers is that they don't dim uniformly by color. So, the projector has to know that if you set your colors at say 70%, what offsets to apply when you are at 30%. I, suppose, this is an advantage to the all-blue laser systems as one is dimming the same color (though different laser banks). As I recall, Christie was rather rough on their first RGB laser systems as one was setting the lumen output by manually setting the three colors.

NEC's HMI projectors, like the 900 had to have color calibration for every lumen output needed as the HMI lamps were not uniform in color based on intensity. With their RBB laser systems (NC3541L) one only need set the color once, I believe, but I have not done extensive testing to see how accurate they are from lumen to lumen. They always look "colder" to me than RGB systems. They seem to also have their own algorithm when it comes to converting your MCGD input into a color correction.

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

Indeed, laptop presentations have, more often than not, the house (or other) lights on. Yet, they are the scenario where presenters are more likely to stand against the beam.
So, be gentle.

[Matt Fields]

Christie series 4 is 30 to 100 percent....on the series 4 Christie, using their Hawkeye software at setup insures color consistency at all levels, a big step up from what Steve mentioned about their series 3 projectors.