Panasonic PT-AE8000 Projector Calibration and Settings 2

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Art Feierman

PT-AE8000 Greyscale Calibration REC 709 Mode

Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration)
20 IRE =	6465
30 IRE =	6665
40 IRE =	6614
50 IRE =	6335
60 IRE =	6395
70 IRE =	6542
80 IRE =	6638
90 IRE =	6705
100 IRE =	6532
Average gamma = 2.23

PT-AE8000 RGB Settings

HC5020 Post Calibration settings
	Rec. 709 (Memory 1)		Quick Cal of Dynamic (Memory 2)
Contrast	R	1	R	20
	G	-4	G	-15
	B	-2	B	-15
Brisghtness	R	-1	R	0
	G	-1	G	0
	B	0	B	0

Here are Mike's adjustments for the REC 709 and Dynamic modes. Again the goal of "best" is a great looking 6500K grayscale, and the goal of "brightest" is to improve a bright mode in terms of color accuracy, but without compromising brightness significantly.

Mike's spreadsheet reference to Memory 1 and 2 are the first two savable memory slots on the PT-AE8000.

Interestingly, as it turns out, all of Mike's settings above are identical to calibrating last year's AE7000, except for REC 709's Red Contrast, which dropped from 7 to 3.

That covers the calibration data, except for CMS. More on that to be mentioned in my blog.

Mike's two cents about his calibration experience:

Mike's Notes: Overall, the projector looks really good. Grayscale is not bad right out of the box, though there’s too much blue and too little red in Rec. 709 mode. It calibrates fairly well (see graph), but the color temp and RGB balance are not as flat as I’d like to see (note the peaks of red at 40 and 50 IRE in the RGB Color Balance chart and the bumps in the Correlated Color Temperature chart. None of this is really visible in actual use however. There are extensive gamma settings available, but the simple gamma setting is so good, most people won’t bother with it.

The AE8000 can be very bright, with almost 2200 lumens in Dynamic mode with full wide zoom. However, Dynamic is very green, not great for most viewing. Doing a Quick Cal of Dynamic helps some, but the lumen output starts to drop rapidly. As the brightest of the other modes (Normal) has a 33% drop from Dynamic and Rec. 709 is about one third as bright as Dynamic, the usable lumens for most viewing are comparable to other projectors that might have a lower rated maximum output.

The color gamut is decent by default in Rec. 709 mode, but can be improved with the CMS. In particular, green and cyan are well outside of the Rec. 709 standard, but can be brought in line. Similarly, magenta leans toward blue by default, but can be brought back into line (see CIE and CIE-CMS gamuts for before and after). The result looks pretty good with most source material. If your personal tastes are for less red in skin tones, you can always turn the main Color control down.