Photos of Palette Differences from Using Various Laser Wavelength Combinations

[taggalucci]

Here are a couple of photos taken recently which are quite interesting when looking at the differences that various wavelength combinations can make on the colour palette...

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Apart from being more than 3 times the power, the projector on the left (in both sets) has 445nm, 473nm, 532nm and 635nm lasers (using 4 separate colour channels in LD2000). The projector on the right has 445nm, 532nm and 660nm lasers.

My observations are:

• Although my 473nm is not that powerful, it does add a little to the lighter end of the blue (cyans and sky blues), but not so significant that you can't obtain a decent cyan without it
• 660nm makes 635nm look orange by comparison, though it is so dark it gets "lost" amongst the other colours. Adding more may be an option, but it also reduces your MPE "headroom"
• Manual Palette Training in LD2000 is cool! I can get so much more colour variation from doing this rather than just relying on the wizard (which, I until I tried it, I was more than happy with)

[Insanity]

Interesting stuff, great pictures, you obviously have a nice camera to pick up those very slight differences...

I also have 473 and 445 in my projector at the moment, and my red is 640...

I noticed that the difference 473 makes to the mix is minimal (been running this setup just over a year). It does make a difference to the cyan and this is hard to explain, but I think the cyan is a bit more saturated with 473. Like you say, you can still achieve a good cyan with 445 alone but it is a much sharper colour. I actually think it is a cleaner colour and personally prefer it. The deep blues and violets from 445 are the colours that I personally like the best, and general concensus from lighting techs at various gigs seems to be that the violets are the most impressive colours.



I am currently (very slowly) upgrading from 2.5 watts to 5- 6 watts at which point the 473 will go. The new system will have 2 watts of 445 and adding enough 473 to make a difference will cost thousands which I can't justify spending as it made so little difference.

The 640 red is great, apart from the far more manageable beam specs, the wavelength gives some very deep reds without having to use megawatts of power.



I completely agree on the manual palette, but it can become an addiction I tend to use the wizard to get the palette roughly right and then spend hours tweaking it manually. Before every show I jump into the palette settings and find yet another new colour that I didn't have before.

Cheers
Mark

[taggalucci]

Thanks Mark

Great pictures yourself! I love the clean mix you have in your colours, no fringe shouting out that your alignment's a bit squiff! I need to spend a fair amount of time getting my lot sweetened (and at least an equal amount of time going through your LivePro training DVD ).

That photo of the white and red greatly illustrates the colour balance you've achieved and the sharpness of the alignment.

I'm using a Canon G10 which has enough manual control and resolution to get the money shots without it being overly bulky and heavy. Apparently a few journos use them out in the field in tough places like Afghanistan.

I think one of the interesting things I found with this comparison was that is now considerably inexpensive to obtain (by DIY build) a well balanced full-colour laser projector. Not a powerful projector, but a more than decent small venue one. However, having the software/hardware to make it possible to manage the balance of colours is vital, and I believe one needs to spend just as much on this for a little projector as one would on a 10W monster!

[Insanity]

Totally agree, you can have the best, most powerful projector on the planet, but if your software is not up to task it will look no better than any other projector...

Even with the best software, relying on wizards to tune your colour is wasteful... It is worth spending a few hours with manual processes to get those colours screaming out at you...

I'm just waiting on some pics from a professional photographer for my website... Once i get them and his permission I will post a few... My camera is nothing special and getting good shots for me is pot luck. But the photo's this pro guy took, blew me away, couldn't believe it was my show in the pics...

Mark

[ElektroFreak]

Great pics, and great thread! I've been hoping someone would do a direct side-by-side comparison of a few combinations..

[Laserchik]

I agree-fantastic pics! I hope to see more of the comparisons....it really helps me to understand the differences.

[White-Light]

Here are a couple of photos taken recently which are quite interesting when looking at the differences that various wavelength combinations can make on the colour palette...

.

.

Apart from being more than 3 times the power, the projector on the left (in both sets) has 445nm, 473nm, 532nm and 635nm lasers (using 4 separate colour channels in LD2000). The projector on the right has 445nm, 532nm and 660nm lasers.

My observations are:

• Although my 473nm is not that powerful, it does add a little to the lighter end of the blue (cyans and sky blues), but not so significant that you can't obtain a decent cyan without it
• 660nm makes 635nm look orange by comparison, though it is so dark it gets "lost" amongst the other colours. Adding more may be an option, but it also reduces your MPE "headroom"
• Manual Palette Training in LD2000 is cool! I can get so much more colour variation from doing this rather than just relying on the wizard (which, I until I tried it, I was more than happy with)

I know there's a big power difference but even so,I think this still demonstrates something I've been saying for a while about 445 and that is whilst the purples and pinks are enhanced, the lighter colours suffer. Just look at the yellow in the left compared to the right. Yes I know 445 isn't mixed in for yellow which is red / green, but for some reason when in adjacent beams it still seems to have a knock on effect in terms of muting the colours. Even allowing for power differences, yellow in the right hand picture is barely discernable despite being one of the brightest colours behind green. Instead its gone a very dirty muted colour. The same can be said of the orange. I've noticed this a lot with 445 alone, which is one of the reasons I'm not a great fan. As a colour in itself, its great, but the knock on effect on other colours is just too great to make me like it. I'd defo like to see 457 otherwise I'm still a 473 fan all the way!

That said, great demonstration of palette tuning. The difference in visible shades right compared to left is massive.

[taggalucci]

Just look at the yellow in the left compared to the right. Yes I know 445 isn't mixed in for yellow which is red / green, but for some reason when in adjacent beams it still seems to have a knock on effect in terms of muting the colours. Even allowing for power differences, yellow in the right hand picture is barely discernable despite being one of the brightest colours behind green. Instead its gone a very dirty muted colour.

Cool, that's an interesting perspective I hadn't considered before. I believe that it's got more to do with the 660nm than the 445nm in that 750mW projector. As I mentioned, I could probably do with adding more red to it (intent was not to spend on this baby projector, so this red would be LPC-815 660nm and not Opnext 640nm). I'm now even more tempted to do this just to see how yellow the yellow can be with 660nm (which appears so unsaturated for the power).

Both projectors have 445nm anyway, and the projector on the right has a fair bit more of it (increased maximum operating current).

The 3W projector (on the right) has so much 635nm (1+W) I actually have it trimmed back to let the other colours balance with it! So my observations are that the red-dependent colours of yellow and orange are easily brought out with the saturation of 635nm.

I'm not sure if you've seen my other post here, in it you can see that prior to Palette Training, there was a lot less obvious yellow or orange (particularly yellow).

The same can be said of the orange.

Yeah, 635nm is screaming orange! ...it just needs a hint of 532nm to take it off-red.

That said, great demonstration of palette tuning.

Thanks mate I might add some more side-by-side shots to help illustrate this; some rainbow blends and some explarations of the different wavelengths on their own.

The difference in visible shades right compared to left is massive.

And just to confirm, these are two separate projectors which most definitely have visible differences between them (power being the key differentiating factor that makes the larger more saturated overall leaving the other looking comparably washed out).

The key point I also wanted to articulate was that Palette Training a colour-challenged projector brought out colours that weren't distinguishable before.

[Insanity]

I know there's a big power difference but even so,I think this still demonstrates something I've been saying for a while about 445 and that is whilst the purples and pinks are enhanced, the lighter colours suffer. Just look at the yellow in the left compared to the right. Yes I know 445 isn't mixed in for yellow which is red / green, but for some reason when in adjacent beams it still seems to have a knock on effect in terms of muting the colours. Even allowing for power differences, yellow in the right hand picture is barely discernable despite being one of the brightest colours behind green. Instead its gone a very dirty muted colour. The same can be said of the orange. I've noticed this a lot with 445 alone, which is one of the reasons I'm not a great fan. As a colour in itself, its great, but the knock on effect on other colours is just too great to make me like it. I'd defo like to see 457 otherwise I'm still a 473 fan all the way!

That said, great demonstration of palette tuning. The difference in visible shades right compared to left is massive.

I have to say that I am struggling to work out where you get this notion that a deep blue laser has any effect on yellow or orange... I'm pretty sure we have been through this one before, there is no blue used to make the colour yellow... Yellow is made of red and green only, unless of course you are lucky enough to have a yellow module in your projector... It doesn't matter if you have 445, 457, 473 or all three, it should have no bearing on your yellow's unless there is something wrong with your palette tuning or maybe alignment...

Here are a couple of examples of the manual palette screen in LD2000 using the medium colours test pattern. As you can see, for the yellow colour selection, no blue whatsoever is being used. And for the deep blue colour, no green or red is being used.



I had a laser with 473nm for a good few years and it was great, after adding 445nm to the mix I was sold.

Now although I have both in the projector currently, I have spent the last year messing with palette's and have to say that the 473nm makes very little difference. In fact me and Francesco sat my projector alongside his (which had 445nm only and was outputting roughly the same power) and did a few tests with the palette, the difference between the two was negligable, I have 500mw 445nm and 300mw 473nm and the only colour it had any effect on was cyan, which again was only a very slight difference in saturation...

Here are a few more pics of the beams showing yellow, and to my mind there is absolutely nothing wrong with that yellow.



I think you saw Martin's projector running with 445 at one of the LEM's or maybe you saw it on a video, can't remember for sure, but that projector had not had its palette manually tuned... I think the whole point behind this thread is 'Don't rely on the wizard', get in there and tune the palette manually.

And just a little tip for you palette tuners. If you are using LD2000, once you have tweaked your palette it will ask if you want to train that palette. Just say no I found that training the palette removed all the hard work and tweaking I had put in. In fact I showed this to Francesco and we swapped blue and orange in the palette. So we clicked the orange circle in the test pattern and told LD2000 to only use blue for that colour. But after training the palette it went back to orange. This appears to be a bug, which I believe Francesco pointed out to Bill.

So, in summary: Use the test patterns to tune your palette and when you save that palette, DON'T allow LD2000 to train it... I think you will find colours you never knew you had...

Mark

[White-Light]

I have to say that I am struggling to work out where you get this notion that a deep blue laser has any effect on yellow or orange... I'm pretty sure we have been through this one before, there is no blue used to make the colour yellow... Yellow is made of red and green only, unless of course you are lucky enough to have a yellow module in your projector... It doesn't matter if you have 445, 457, 473 or all three, it should have no bearing on your yellow's unless there is something wrong with your palette tuning or maybe alignment...

Mark

I know Mark. But for some reason it seems to affect the luminosity of may of the lighter colours. I can't offer a logical scientific explanation, only what I've seen and what I've seen is that projectors with 473 are very bright and punchy across the board but only make quite basic purples and pinks. Projectors with 445 make very strong purples and pinks but tend to have more muted upper colours. I'm aware there's no mixing of 445 in many of these other colours, I can only presume that there's something going on that affects adjacent beams when 445 is in use. Maybe its even a trick of the eye, but it just seems to me that when 445 is in a fan the lighter colours suffer a reduction in luminosity.

I know pictures aren't a good way of comparison but on a forum thats all there is to be had.

Here's a Ministry video using 473 and a projector of similar power to yours (i understood it was 3 watts).

Your beams are nearer the axis of the eye and are pencil whereas the ministry beams using 473 are more off axis and its a fan. So the pictures should favour your projector.

However, look at the difference in brightness, colour density and punch. The yellow in the 445 fan appears muted by comparison:



There are others I could post as even the green looks better but as I said pictures don't really count for much.

However, I am still convinced from what I've seen of many many videos and at UKlem that whilst 445 has great advantages for purples and pinks and white, it does nevertheless (somehow) impact on the other colours in multicolour fans, tunnels etc.