I have just spent the best part of Saturday in the excellent company of Ricky from Kalibrate who has ISF calibrated our new HW55 projector (purchased from him with an Oppo 103d blu ray player and Draper screen) and five year old Pioneer Kuro LX5090 plasma TV.
He started with the projector (which to be fair he had already tweaked at his home before sending it out to us in April and had completed 175 hours by the time Ricky arrived) which is firing at a 220cm Draper React 2.1 borderless motorised screen. After a good four hours all I can say is that the picture had more depth to it and took on a subtler more comfortable look.
I am a graphic designer of 28 years so I know something about colour accuracy, print colour tolerances and monitors. This allowed me to watch Ricky working with his equipment and have a good understanding of what he was doing and also a great interest!
It transpired that the projector was pretty good – a great testament to the quality of the Sony. But the blue was slightly high and after Ricky’s deft touch, that and the gamma was adjusted to leave me very happy with a better 2D picture. Depth in shadow areas was so much better. The bank robbery scene in The Dark Knight showed more life in the folds of the robbers clothes and really dark areas that you knew had detail within them didn’t look like just solid black shapes.
I had dabbled in 3D and found the image to be too bright and colours to searing for any serious watching. After Ricky had finished adjusting for a ‘night’ and ‘day’ ISF setting, the test section of Avatar was a revelation. The colours were more natural and the brightness was less harsh. The detail in shadow areas was now excellent too.
He moved on to our five year old plasma, which I have had a play with using a DVE DVD test disc in the past. I thought I had done a pretty good job with that but it was a year or so ago, so I sort of knew I was in for a possible reality check. My wife and I thought the picture was good but we found the blue was extremely high and again shadow detail was missing from dark areas.
After Ricky had finished the difference was amazing and has given our great TV a new lease of life. It’s still a great display and I think I would only change it for an OLED display of a similar size if we needed to, but after this I think we can wait a little longer!
I cannot praise him enough for his professionalism and skill in extracting the best possible picture out of both our pieces of equipment. If anyone is thinking about having their display or projector calibrated then what my wife and I saw after he had finished would convince the most sceptical.
Well there you have it, Ricky’s skill and determination to get the best possible picture for us had him still with us at nearly 7pm. His genuine love for the process and willing to explain what he was doing was a real joy. It helped me understand what the improvements were and we would recommend him to anyone thinking of getting the best possible picture from their old or newly purchased equipment.
