Giselle at Putney Odeon lacking in full contrast

We went for our first ever viewing of a live ballet telecast last night.

My wife complained that the first act (forget the second that takes place at night!) was too dark on the screen.

I agree but also add that even in the second act there were no real blacks on the screen. I am a photographer. Except in special cases I always make sure my images/prints have at least some full blacks and some full whites.

In the old days (I wowed never to use those words when I hit sixty) we used to have televisions where the picture went from normal to brighter/grayer depending on the scene. I seem to remember that Sony 'invented a way' of stopping this happening.

Is the problem that Odeon are not spending enough on projectors in cinemas like Putney or is this an intrinsic problem of the move from film to digital in cinemas that our children and their descendants will have to live with.

One industry problem we live with is that film makers tend to see their output in smart preview theatres which are different technically to the high street cinema. I can't think any ROH executive would have been happy with what I saw last night.

Tony

Hi
Never seen one of these presentations but at the cinema I'm not sure about
the silver screens they have these days.
In general digital cinema it is poorly presented.
Regards
David





"TonyGamble" wrote in message
...

We went for our first ever viewing of a live ballet telecast last night.

My wife complained that the first act (forget the second that takes place at
night!) was too dark on the screen.

I agree but also add that even in the second act there were no real blacks
on the screen. I am a photographer. Except in special cases I always make
sure my images/prints have at least some full blacks and some full whites.

In the old days (I wowed never to use those words when I hit sixty) we used
to have televisions where the picture went from normal to brighter/grayer
depending on the scene. I seem to remember that Sony 'invented a way' of
stopping this happening.

Is the problem that Odeon are not spending enough on projectors in cinemas
like Putney or is this an intrinsic problem of the move from film to digital
in cinemas that our children and their descendants will have to live with.

One industry problem we live with is that film makers tend to see their
output in smart preview theatres which are different technically to the high
street cinema. I can't think any ROH executive would have been happy with
what I saw last night.

Tony

On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 22:42:01 -0800 (PST), TonyGamble
wrote:

In the old days (I wowed never to use those words when I hit sixty) we used to have televisions where the picture went from normal to brighter/grayer depending on the scene. I seem to remember that Sony 'invented a way' of stopping this happening.

It's called a black level clamp and was used in professional gear. I
never understood why it wasn't fitted to domestic kit because it wasn't
expensive.

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
By Loch Long, twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.co.uk/weather

In article ,
Alan wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 22:42:01 -0800 (PST), TonyGamble
wrote:

In the old days (I wowed never to use those words when I hit sixty) we
used to have televisions where the picture went from normal to
brighter/grayer depending on the scene. I seem to remember that Sony
'invented a way' of stopping this happening.

It's called a black level clamp and was used in professional gear. I
never understood why it wasn't fitted to domestic kit because it wasn't
expensive.

It was, if you looked around. I went to the Radio Show in 1964 hunting for
such a set. Ekco had one - and someone on the stand understood my question.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

As the preceding message was top-posted. I'll follow to avoid confusion.

My wife went to see Giselle at the Watford Palace last night. She had
absolutely no complaints.

As for digital at the cinema, I recall being bowled over by Lincoln at the
Harrow Vue and more so by Gravity at the Finchley Vue.

Alan


David wrote:

Hi
Never seen one of these presentations but at the cinema I'm not sure about
the silver screens they have these days.
In general digital cinema it is poorly presented.
Regards
David





"TonyGamble" wrote in message
...

We went for our first ever viewing of a live ballet telecast last night.

My wife complained that the first act (forget the second that takes place
at night!) was too dark on the screen.

I agree but also add that even in the second act there were no real blacks
on the screen. I am a photographer. Except in special cases I always make
sure my images/prints have at least some full blacks and some full whites.

In the old days (I wowed never to use those words when I hit sixty) we
used to have televisions where the picture went from normal to
brighter/grayer depending on the scene. I seem to remember that Sony
'invented a way' of stopping this happening.

Is the problem that Odeon are not spending enough on projectors in cinemas
like Putney or is this an intrinsic problem of the move from film to
digital in cinemas that our children and their descendants will have to
live with.

One industry problem we live with is that film makers tend to see their
output in smart preview theatres which are different technically to the
high street cinema. I can't think any ROH executive would have been happy
with what I saw last night.

Tony
--
__________________________________________________ _

Mageia 3 for x86_64, Kernel: 3.8.13.4 -desktop-1.mga3
KDE version 4.10.5 Running on an AMD 4-core processor

On Tue, 28 Jan 2014 08:38:47 +0000, Alan
wrote:

In the old days (I wowed never to use those words when I hit sixty)
we used to have televisions where the picture went from normal to
brighter/grayer depending on the scene. I seem to remember that
Sony 'invented a way' of stopping this happening.

It's called a black level clamp and was used in professional gear. I
never understood why it wasn't fitted to domestic kit because it wasn't
expensive.

I don't think it was Sony that invented the black level clamp. All the
broadcast monitors I've ever seen had them.

I think the reason for not bothering in domestic TVs probably was to
do with cost (isn't it always?). The clamp circuitry itself would only
have used about half a dozen extra components at the cost of a few
pence, but the EHT supply would have needed a greater power output and
a better standard of voltage regulation to cope with the increased
variation in current demand, and that would have cost a lot more.

By the time colour TV came along, there was no escaping the use of
clamps because the colour variations without them would have looked
far worse than the brightness variations that had afflicted black and
white TV. It wasn't difficult to get people to accept that colour TV
sets had to be more expensive anyway.

Rod.

As OP can I ask that we get back to my key question and pass on black level clamps, please.

I accept that some cinemas may have got the technology right but why was the picture in Putney dim? Are all these projectors the same? Do they need adjusting? Are the cinema staff trained to calibrate them? Might Odeon have bought a job lot of projectors and installed them willy-nilly in assorted sizes of cinema.

My experience was that most people with a tv set watched it with the brightness too high. I say was as flat screen tvs seem to work with 'out of the box' settings whereas the old CRT sets didn't. I say this as most cinema going public are unlikely to see anything wrong. I even went to a preview of Quartet at the Chelsea Curzon where they showed it in the wrong ratio and the film company staff did not notice.

Tony

Alan White wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 22:42:01 -0800 (PST), TonyGamble
wrote:

In the old days (I wowed never to use those words when I hit sixty) we used to have televisions

where the picture went from normal to brighter/grayer depending on the
scene. I seem to remember that Sony 'invented a way' of stopping this
happening.

It's called a black level clamp and was used in professional gear. I
never understood why it wasn't fitted to domestic kit because it wasn't
expensive.


It was a feature of some domestic sets. We're talking about old
monochrome sets here of course.

Bill

Some cinemas have the older 2K projectors and others 4K. EG the National
Media Museum where I see movies, 2 cinemas 2K and Pictureville has 4K. I
know the projector there can be adjusted for light out put as they have a
normal flat white screen and a very much larger deep curved screen for
special presentation so a bigger area to cover.
Regards
David




"TonyGamble" wrote in message
...

As OP can I ask that we get back to my key question and pass on black level
clamps, please.

I accept that some cinemas may have got the technology right but why was the
picture in Putney dim? Are all these projectors the same? Do they need
adjusting? Are the cinema staff trained to calibrate them? Might Odeon have
bought a job lot of projectors and installed them willy-nilly in assorted
sizes of cinema.

My experience was that most people with a tv set watched it with the
brightness too high. I say was as flat screen tvs seem to work with 'out of
the box' settings whereas the old CRT sets didn't. I say this as most cinema
going public are unlikely to see anything wrong. I even went to a preview of
Quartet at the Chelsea Curzon where they showed it in the wrong ratio and
the film company staff did not notice.

Tony

"TonyGamble" wrote in message
...
As OP can I ask that we get back to my key question and pass on black
level clamps, please.

I accept that some cinemas may have got the technology right but why was
the picture in Putney dim? Are all these projectors the same? Do they need
adjusting? Are the cinema staff trained to calibrate them? Might Odeon
have bought a job lot of projectors and installed them willy-nilly in
assorted sizes of cinema.

My experience was that most people with a tv set watched it with the
brightness too high. I say was as flat screen tvs seem to work with 'out
of the box' settings whereas the old CRT sets didn't. I say this as most
cinema going public are unlikely to see anything wrong. I even went to a
preview of Quartet at the Chelsea Curzon where they showed it in the wrong
ratio and the film company staff did not notice.

Why don't you ask the Company?
--
JohnT