David,
Not quite. Your projector (when calibrated correctly) should reproduce the full black to white range of your source. The trick is that digital projectors produce "full black" as dark grey (e.g. a value of 5 to use your example).
IMO, the loss of shadow detail occurs when light reflected back by the walls of the room wash out the lower levels. For example, if you had black as 5 and values of 6,7,8, etc. on the screen all would be well. However if you consider that the room reflects back maybe a value of 3, you get values of 8,9,10,11. This kind of compresses the grey scale in the dark values and you lose shadow detail.
A grey screen partially corrects this by absorbing light and reducing the effect and amount of light reflected by the walls. So where you had a back reflection of 3 in the previous example, this might fall to 1 with a grey screen. This will also help your colour saturation because there is less light reflected by the walls to wash out pure colours.
Regards,
Kam Fung
Not quite. Your projector (when calibrated correctly) should reproduce the full black to white range of your source. The trick is that digital projectors produce "full black" as dark grey (e.g. a value of 5 to use your example).
IMO, the loss of shadow detail occurs when light reflected back by the walls of the room wash out the lower levels. For example, if you had black as 5 and values of 6,7,8, etc. on the screen all would be well. However if you consider that the room reflects back maybe a value of 3, you get values of 8,9,10,11. This kind of compresses the grey scale in the dark values and you lose shadow detail.
A grey screen partially corrects this by absorbing light and reducing the effect and amount of light reflected by the walls. So where you had a back reflection of 3 in the previous example, this might fall to 1 with a grey screen. This will also help your colour saturation because there is less light reflected by the walls to wash out pure colours.
Regards,
Kam Fung