"Xzener's Dedicated Theater" Construction Thread - Page 7

Room looks great! Manage to get any pics of the night sky yet?

BRAVO!!

The room looks terrific, xzener. Well done.


... now what do you want to change?

I cant wait to see the stars but I M concerned about how the hidden stars will look whehn the lights are on...will you be able to detect them? Are the stars a higher gloss finish than the day sky finish.

xzener, your sky looks great! One question, who's theater is the one you just posted a pic of?

That's true.... he doesn't have a thread on here. I told him about it though, and he was going to check it out, but don't know if he ever did.

And, just a quick addition to the answer you have about the stars visibility/invisibility... the stars are almost impossible to see on a lighter surface, even one that is starting to get into the darker shades. But, when the paint gets to be fairly dark then you will usually see the larger constellation stars. But, on the right surface, even that looks good. Let's say you have a black or navy blue painted ceiling... then you would see things like the Big and Little Dippers, Orion, Leo and so on. Plus, there might be a few other smaller stars that show up, but out of thousands of stars... you would only see a handful.

The paint has a light sheen to it, but so little paint is used that, as has been mentioned, you really would have to look for it to notice it. I can probably have a matte medium mixed up by a friend of mine who is a faux painter... but it's never been a problem yet.

Sorry to butt in here... but I just wanted try to see if I could help out. I am super excited to get out there to help you finish that room. I set up another job in Ohio today... so my east coast trip is looking good (I know that Ohio isn't on the east coast, but I make stops along the way). I now just need to get another job or two in California and I will be on my way.

Hope this helps!

Jeff

Great job with the ceiling. All your effort definately paid off. I also like the hardwood floor. Nice to see a theater not covered in wall to wall carpet.
Enjoy!

I was going to ask about sound treatment. The thing I like about hard floors rather than carpeting is that you have options to play with. If my room had wall to wall carpet with underlay in addition to the required treatments to keep direct wall reflections and bass nodes & nulls under control it would sound like a padded cell.
There is some science to it, but also a great deal of trial and error. Improvement is easy, perfection near impossible (and extremly subjective). Good luck.

The picture you are asking about was taken by a friend of the homeowner, who is a movie producer/director. He would visit the homeowner and they'd watch movies. He was fascinated by the night sky mural and on one trip to visit his friend... he took some of his high-end equipment with him to get some pictures. These are the first really good pictures that I've had of the ceiling without any need for enhancing the stars. I'd had magazine photographers try to get pictures and then HGTV, when they did the spot for their network had a hard time capturing the murals... so they had to film with a black light on, which really isn't the same as seeing it in the dark. But, what can you do?

Anyway, cameras have come a long way.... and I don't have a good one. I have put out some ads offering to trade a mural for a nice camera, but I've only had people contact me with "film" cameras. So, I think, that unless someone comes through soon, we may not be able to get a good shot of your ceiling.

I do know, though, that a few people from AVS that I've painted for have had nice cameras and have gotten some good shots (that I'm sure you've seen on the Night Sky thread). I am so happy that they were able to get those shots! I'm working on getting a good camera... but we'll see if I can before I get to you.

Jeff

It really shouldn't be too complicated to get the picture with a low-end DSLR camera. Take one time-lapse exposure in a dark room with only the star field, and then a "regular" exposure of the rest of the room, and composite those together in a photo editor. That's probably how they got the really good one above.

Video would be much, much harder.

xzener,
Your room looks great. I am going to try to reproduce your crown, only my supports will be triangles since the bottom of the soffit doesn't stick out. Do you think that would work? Should I attach the supports to the crown before I hang it or to the wall first?

Do you have any of the blue ceiling color left? If so you could paint that HVAC register and it will disappear. (just a suggestion not a criticism)

Does your camera have a manual mode? If you can control the shutter speed (and keep it open for a LONG time), you can probably do it. You need a little technical expertise to know how to set your camera up for the proper exposure for both photos to get the best results, but given that we have complete light control and are taking images of something very dim, I would take a zero light photo of the room for a second or two, and see how the stars show up. If that works well, bring the lights up some and take a second, much shorter shot. Also, auto-exposure-bracketing might give better results than a single exposure.

You may want to also take a third photo to composite in a screen shot, for the best results.

If you take them all from a tripod, it'll be trivial to stitch them together later.

Here's a good example (from a scientific publication) on how the technique works: http://wearcam.org/wyckoff/index.html

The "simple example" link from that page ( http://hi.eecg.toronto.edu/wyckoff.html ) is perhaps the most salient example of what I'm talking about.

The basic problem is that the human eye can perceive a much greater range than a camera can, so we have to simulate that to make a photograph more closely match what we can perceive, and we do that by merging multiple photographs depicting different ranges. It's typically called HDR ("High Dynamic Range"); here's a gallery with a bunch of great shots: http://www.2expertsdesign.com/inspir...dr-photography Some of those are a little over-processed, but they more accurately represent what the human eye sees, rather than the photos you would normally see come out of a pocket camera in those situations (which part of would either be dramatically under-exposed, or dramatically over-exposed).

Sorry for crapping up your thread with this stuff, but... it seemed relevant to the current discussion. I like your theater quite a bit; my future theater space is a bit larger, but smaller than I'd like, and you've given me some ideas of what can still be accomplished in a snugger space.

Wow.. and I thought it would be easy to just get a good camera and set the shutter to stay open longer. But, that doesn't discourage me in the slightest. I will just learn some basic stuff... and then a little more down the road.

BTW... I am checking into a couple of nice (for me) camera's hoping that one of the people will trade a mural for it, but if not I will buy one of them if they still have them. Hopefully I will have it before I head out there to my old stomping grounds.

I need my Cali fix. It seems that every year at this time of the year... my entire body starts to crave the redwoods. Or, even driving up and down I-5 or 99 and spelling the farming and oil field smells. Can't wait.

Xzener,

I like the updated choice of Ikea items, I am very happy with my Ikea bookcase that I used as my projector shelf in the back of my room. are you going to put all your av equipment in the credenza? I really like how the screen is framed by the furniture.

That one little purchase (or maybe not so little) is going to make your mural pop out. You should be able to see most of the mural, too, while you are watching a movie. But, the best part is once the movie is over and you charge up the stars for a few minutes and then turn out those 8- 4' lights... you are going to be transported far, far away from that room of yours. You will be in the middle of some very remote location, or out on a blacked out navy ship at sea.

You will not be sorry for getting those lights.

Jeff

I cant wait to see the pictures of it. What type of black light did you purchase?