does ANYONE prefer laser to xenon?

[James Gardiner]

From my perspective. Laser is better. Mainly due to the consistency of brightness across the screen.
metamerics is an issue but from my perspective in working with colour graders. It's only ever something they will notice. But yes, considering laser is the only form of projected image going forward, they have to come to terms with that issue. Barco has some type of Post-Projector coming out that is supposed to help with this issue.
But really, I find it a little academic.. as compared to the good old film days, where the colour of the image is directly effected by the varying state of the baths the film is developed in. Resulting in a greater divergence than metamerics. I see this as mostly a non-issue when it comes to consumer expectations.

On laser reaching the DCI primaries. Everyone has moved to better laser diodes, making this mostly a non issue from my understanding. Also, lasers, due to their nature will not drift, i.e. the spectral envelope will not change with age like a xenon lamp. For example, a grading house would do a light measurement every morning. Laser, as you would expect, shows this is not so much needed, as it does not deviate. A laser only makes a certain frequency of light, so no changing of envelope over time, just ensuring the power per colour channel does not drift is the issue.

I also consider this is more a vinyl vs digital type argument. Technically digital is better but many prefer vinyl. Technically, Laser is better, but I expect many here prefer xenon.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I also consider this is more a vinyl vs digital type argument. Technically digital is better but many prefer vinyl. Technically, Laser is better, but I expect many here prefer xenon.

There is a distinct difference though. Digital, given a good enough DAC, can be made to sound exactly like the vinyl recording, by simply recording this vinyl on a playback device with all its "defects". It's more like different speaker types, where every speaker will add some kind of unique "color" to the playback of the audio track. The question remains if you can actually hear the difference. Or it's rather more like film versus digital... although that's probably also a bit of a wrong comparison, because even 4K digital cinema can't exactly reproduce the 35mm film experience. :P

If I watch a laser DCI presentation without a reference, the fact that the colors might be slightly different than intended, usually doesn't bother me one bit, as I don't have a reference, so I simply don't know better. Some laser projectors, especially the Barco SP4K series, have the tendency to create something that looks like banding artifacts on some large flat surfaces, this is something you can especially notice in animation movies. I've heard that those artifacts might be the result from some "despeckling" going wrong in certain edge cases and that future software updates may fix this.

Still, I'd say that I generally prefer a good laser presentation v.s. a good xenon presentations. I'm simply a sucker for the better contrast of the laser picture and especially the darker blacks. To me, laser generally feels more like film than digital xenon does.

[Steve Guttag]

The problem remains on metamerics is that if the color timer sees the laser projection as red shifted...they will correct for that and cause those that see the image as green shifted even MORE green shifted. It isn't a matter of getting over it. As for not having a reference...that is nonsense. Fleshtones are almost always the dead giveaway. You know what people should look like. So, either the makeup people blew it and made everyone too green or too red or...the projector did it.

I prefer the higher contrast too but definitely prefer the colors of a xenon projector.

As for color stability...it is true that the lasers are at a specific wavelength(s) (part of the despeckling includes multiple wavelengths in the red and green by multiple manufacturers)...but how the lasers decay with respect to intensity is another thing (the colors don't decay at the same rate).

Lest we forget that not all lasers are created equal. That is, there is a degree of phosphor wheel laser systems out there. Some using only blue lasers with yellow phosphor and some with Red, and Blue with a green phosphor wheel. They are not as stable and the colors made by phosphor wheel are far from monochromatic. While the phosphor wheel laser systems don't have the speckle issue or metamerics, their color is also different. For instance, one of the RBB systems out there always looks "colder" to me despite what the meter shows. A projector should not have a "characteristic look" anymore than a speaker should have a characteristic sound.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The problem remains on metamerics is that if the color timer sees the laser projection as red shifted...they will correct for that and cause those that see the image as green shifted even MORE green shifted. It isn't a matter of getting over it. As for not having a reference...that is nonsense. Fleshtones are almost always the dead giveaway. You know what people should look like. So, either the makeup people blew it and made everyone too green or too red or...the projector did it.

Most of those color shifts aren't so extreme that people turn alien green or red. You may notice it, but the color shift can also be an artistic choice, like the evident green shift in the Matrix for the "in-Matrix" scenes. Without reference, I don't know if it's on purpose or the projector being wrongly calibrated, unless it's really obvious. Those differences between xenon and laser may be obvious side-by-side, but not in individual screenings and like you said, in case of laser, they may also differ from person to person. If I see a new movie, I don't know what the "supposed color timing" is. Color timings also sometimes greatly vary between releases. The theatrical release of The Lord of the Rings looks vastly different than the Blu-Ray release, for example.

To be honest, it can even take me a while before some obvious stuff becomes apparent. I remember a digital screening of Fight Club. We lost the green satellite somewhere in the last 20% of the show, but the movie kept playing. It wasn't until a few minutes after it happened that I really started to notice that the picture was off. Even then, I was asking myself... Did this movie actually look that way? Is it on purpose, because it's all supposed to be a dream? It wasn't until I walked back to the booth that it was obvious what had happened...

[Jesse Crooks]

I far prefer laser to xenon, but the color issues are a problem. As Steve says, it varies by the viewer, and I find that it tends to manifest sporadically. Most color films look great to me, but on occasion I observe what seems like color fringing. It reminds me of bad registration on a Cinecolor film print, where you get colored lines around the edges of objects where there is high contrast. But again, for most films it looks fine to me. The bigger problem for me is that black and white films often have a hue. To me they often look green. To other people they may look red. But sometimes they look amazing, with an inky black that’s a whole lot closer to 35mm than xenon can approximate.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've not really watched a lot of black and white movies on laser yet. I'm not really a fan of the look of black and white footage on digital xenon to be honest. Then again, I also don't really like the look of black and white on 35mm color film either. "The Artist" is such a movie; you can never hide all the artifacts of a color print and as such, it looks fake to me. I remember Schindler's List being released on real black and white release prints, with only a few parts in color or with colorized elements on color film, spliced in by hand into the release prints. I'm not sure if any other big release ever since made such efforts.

[Steve Guttag]

Really? Zelig It has a gazillion B&W and Color sections spliced together on each and every print! The reissue of The Wizard of Oz in the '90s in Technicolor. The color portions were on B&W stock and the B&W portions were on color stock to fake the sepia.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Really? Zelig It has a gazillion B&W and Color sections spliced together on each and every print! The reissue of The Wizard of Oz in the '90s in Technicolor. The color portions were on B&W stock and the B&W portions were on color stock to fake the sepia.

We just ran a Wiz version, will have to check our inspection report, not sure if it was that 90s version, but I hated the sepia toned opening, plus it had crazy horizontal banding on reel 1 through all that.

Oh and it was 137 squished to fit into a flat matte framing. Like 1/2 the grain resolution, designed for flat/scope houses exclusively. Color scenes at least looked good though beyond being extremely dirty print. R1 was just whacky to my eye.

[Steve Guttag]

Then you didn't get a technicolor print. The technicolor prints were all 1.37 full frame...the normal prints (all color) were 1.37 within 1.85 as that is what normal theatres would have lenses for.

[Leo Enticknap]

How good a b/w DCP looks depends more, IMHO, on the mastering of the DCP than the light source in the digital projector. Assuming that the colors have been shot right and recently, b/w DCPs can look pretty good. But if the timing or color space on the DCP has an issue, that can spoil things.

Agreed with b/w on color 35mm stock. The example that sticks in my mind was a print of a "restoration" of Les vacances de M. Hulot I played towards the end of my time at the Egyptian. All but the final reel was printed on 2302, but that last reel was on 2383, because of a color effect, literally in one shot and the closing credits. That entire reel had a purple/magenta cast to it, which even a couple of customers complained about. Paradoxically, if the entire show had been on 2383, our eyes would have gotten used to it and tuned it out. But because most of the movie looked so crisp and silver, that last reel stuck out like a sore thumb. The subtitles weren't as sharp, either. At least it was printed in full Academy, and not 1.37 squished into a 1.85 matte.