Epson Pro Cinema LS10500 Laser Home Theater Projector – Calibration Settings

Epson Pro Cinema LS10500 Laser Home Theater Projector Review – Calibration Settings: Calibration Presets Notes, Best Mode Calibration, Brightest Mode Calibration & 4K Calibration

My overall impressions on the performance of the LS10500 are very good. I discovered a few niggling issues during calibration but nothing that really hindered its best performance. The LS10500 has 7 presets (Dynamic, Bright Cinema, Natural, Cinema, B&W Cinema, Digital Cinema & Adobe RGB) plus 2 for 3D.

Note: The terminology used in this calibration page, Brightest Mode and Best Mode, refer to two modes of this projector. "Brightest Mode" refers to the brightest (calibrated) mode the projector has, while "Best Mode" refers to the mode with the best calibrated color offered by the projector. These modes will often not be named "Brightest" or "Best" in the projector's menu - these are merely terms we use to describe the brightest mode and the mode with the best color.

For my Best Mode (1080p) calibration, I used Cinema Mode with the light engine set to Bright. With Color Space set to Auto the projector produced a color gamut a little bigger than BT.709. After calibration, using the RGBCMY (CMS) controls the color gamut fell into a near perfect BT.709 across all luminance levels, resulting in very pleasing, natural colors. See the Advanced Calibration page for more details/charts and CMS settings.

The one area that bothered me a little was the fact that with the Contrast set to its default value of 0 the whites would clip quite a bit. This means you would lose detail in any content that’s close to peak white. There are 2 ways to fix this. Lower contrast to about -10 with Super White off or leave Contrast at 0 and turn on Super White, which is what I did. The default grayscale (white balance) in most of the modes including Cinema is a bit blue. I had to turn the Color Temp from 2 to -2 and Skin Tone from 2 to 0. This got me the closest to D65 before doing a 2-point RGB calibration. The end results are excellent with a DeltaE (error) less than 1.

Related to over driving the white level is the overly bright gamma curve (1.97 average) even with Gamma set to -1. A brighter gamma curve does not make the peak whites any higher but the low to mid tones are brighter giving the impression of a brighter picture. Through my 2-point white balance calibration I was able to get the gamma closer to my 2.20 target coming in at a 2.15 average.

Delta E is a metric for understanding how the human eye perceives color difference. The term delta comes from mathematics, meaning change in a variable or function. The suffix E references the German word Empfindung, which broadly means sensation. Simply put, look at Delta E as a measure of grayscale/color accuracy. 3 and under is considered ‘Excellent’ and imperceptible by the human eye.

For my Brightest Mode (1080p) calibration I first tried Bright Cinema Mode. Problem is after calibration it’s only a tiny bit brighter with a larger than BT.709 color gamut. The gamma is also excessively bright at an average of 1.57 and could only be brought down to 1.80 with my calibration (target 2.10).

I next tried (and used) Dynamic Mode and was able to achieve a 40% higher peak luminance than Cinema Mode (1068 vs 650). The downside was the color locking into larger P3 gamut used for 4K HDR. I was able to calibrate it down, closer to BT.709 and the gamma curve was better than Bright Cinema Mode at a calibrated average of 2.15.

The grayscale however is not as flat as I like. Blue takes a big nose dive starting at about 80 to 100 IRE. This causes the brighter whites to error towards a green tint. Even with these issues I would choose a calibrated Dynamic mode for my Brightest Mode viewing, especially when watching less accuracy conscience content like sports and news.

Last but not lease I performed a 4K/HDR calibration. I used Digital Cinema Mode for this calibration. Like Cinema Mode I used for my Best Mode, the color gamut performance is excellent with it adhering very close to the DCI/P3 spec, which is where most current 4K/HDR displays are aiming for.

Epson’s first stab at HDR with their 6040/5040 models offered 4 HDR presets along with Auto. When the projector was set to Auto, it defaulted to number 2. Problem was number 2 was a little dark (crushed blacks). Now with the LS10500 they have added an Auto Bright mode which defaults to the preferred number 1 HDR preset.

Default white balance was pushing blue into the 8600K – 9000K range. DeltaE was running from 0 on the low end to 12+ from 60 to 100IRE. After white balance calibration it improved a bit but not to the same accuracy I got with my Best Mode calibration. White balance was averaging between 6400K to 6500K and EOTF (gamma) was very good when set to Auto Bright (HDR mode 1).