Measuring White and Color Brightness of Projectors

Brightness or light output is an important specification for projector. A projector brightness can be categorized into white brightness and color brightness. Having equal amount of white and color light output ensures bright, vibrant and true-to-life images.

White brightness is commonly expressed in ANSI lumens; a measurement unit developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). It is first calculated by averaging the illuminance measurement taken across 9 specific points on a white image. Thereafter, the average illuminance, in units of Lux, is multiplied by the projected image size to obtain ANSI lumens.

Color brightness, a standard methodology established by the Society for Information Displays (SID), quantifies the red, green and blue light from a projector. The method to measure color brightness is almost the same as the white brightness. Instead of the 9 measurements, 27 measurements are taken across 3 sets of 9-point grid made up of red, green and blue.

When attempting to measure projector light output, light measuring instruments like Chroma Meter CL-200A and Illuminance Spectrophotometer CL-500A would be helpful. Beside illuminance measurement, both CL-200A and CL-500A are capable of measuring chromaticity, dominant wavelength and correlated color temperature of various kinds of light sources.

Download our free education booklet to learn the basic concepts of colorimetry and photometry.

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