Pics of games running on KV-24FV300

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 5:02 am

After a lot of trial and error I have finally been able to take some decent photos of games running on my Trinitron KV-24FV300. For those that don't know, this was one of Sony's highest end standard definition consumer CRTs in the early-mid 2000s. The photos don't look quite as good as seeing the games run in person but they are close. All of the games in the photos are running on my softmodded Wii in their native resolutions over component. Most of the games are running through Retroarch and the NES games are running through FCE Ultra GX using FirebrandX's Unsaturated v6 palette. I used a Canon Powershot SX50 HS camera to take the photos.

I found that a shutter speed of 1/20 worked best for me and I generally used the lowest aperture that my camera would allow as I took the photos in a dark room. My ISO was generally set at 800. It was very difficult to not have the moire effect show up in the photo of the screen and I basically just had to take a ton of pictures from various angles and distances to get photos were the moire effect wasn't so prominent.

Here is the link to the folder of my FV300 photos on Mediafire. These photos are the uncompressed originals. You can select them all at once and view them in gallery mode or download them if that is easier:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/3t1ffb ... 300_Photos

austin532 · Post by **austin532** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 6:17 am

How does it look with the 240p Grid pattern? It looks like you can still improve the VSIZ by a few clicks as some of the image gets cut off.

Ikaruga11 · Post by **Ikaruga11** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 1:25 pm

Amazing pictures, Brad! They really show how sharp and colorful the set is. You can clearly see scanlines too.

Xyga · Post by **Xyga** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 1:34 pm

GeneraLight wrote:Amazing pictures, Brad! They really show how sharp and colorful the set is. You can clearly see scanlines too.

Sorry Brad251 and GL I don't share your enthusiasm, all I see is rather small pictures, taken too far-away from the screen showing almost no details you expect to see on good CRT photos, plus with sorta moire artifacts on top of it.
And yeah I've zoomed as much as photobuckcrap allows...

edit: I know I sound like ass but it's true, sorry

Shoryukev · Post by **Shoryukev** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 2:10 pm

It takes a bit of fiddling, but even with a cellphone you can get some decent photos these days. When I took these ones I was pretty much 4-5 inches away from the glass on my 32" consumer JVC. I do the same thing you mentioned, I just shoot multiple pictures in a bunch of different positions and a couple of them usually come out pretty decent. I'm sure there's a science there that could be perfected, but I'm lazy LOL.

My biggest suggestion would be to get up close so we can see some of the detail a little better. There's no real need to get the entire screen in the frame, I like to just focus on one particular sprite or area that has something cool going on. Obviously my pictures aren't that great either and the colors are not incredibly accurate, but hopefully my two cents helps you out.

Spoiler

LEGENOARYNINLIA · Post by **LEGENOARYNINLIA** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 3:23 pm

Another two cents into the mix: photography isn't magic. You can get it to do what you want to do if you know what you are doing and work for it. Saying something generic like cellphones taking decent pics is like saying composite signal looks good. How does it look good? And with what equipment? A PCE Core Grafx looks good on a 14" Sony PVM throug composite. But a SNES on a random consumer tube doesn't. We all know that equipment matters, and photography isn't an exception to that. Those cellphone pics are overexposed and awful.

Tips that come into mind when taking photos of CRT screens:
-Learn how to use the focus in the equipment you are using. If for example you are using an auto focus auxiliary light, it's probably focusing on the outer surface of the glass of the screen.
-If you're getting moire from even colour areas from all kinds of angles then you probably should think of a different scene to take a photo from instead of looking a miraculous angle by luck that would somehow make them disappear.

A generic tip about photography:
-If you took a photo that looks nice and you didn't really put much effort into it, try putting more effort into it and taking an even better photo instead of settling for what was basically just beginner's luck.

FinalBaton · Post by **FinalBaton** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 3:57 pm

It depends on what your objectives(the figuratives ones. lol) are :
Do you want to take amazing CRT pics?
or do you just want to take pics that are good enough to give a good idea of what your monitor looks like?

For the former, you'll need good equipment, no doubt.

But if your goal is the latter, then I truly believe that it can be achieved with a smart phones camera. In fact I have seen plenty of pics on here that looked nice and that were taken with smartphones.

LEGENOARYNINLIA · Post by **LEGENOARYNINLIA** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 6:35 pm

Again, a generalisation. Smartphones. If smartphones can take good enough photos of CRTs then I guess all CRTs also offer good enough picture quality? Yeah, no, we all know that. This is a subforum about specific equipment for video game enthusiasts so I think it's fair to demand a higher standard from photos of said equipment.

I'm not saying everyone needs to stop using smartphones to take photos. I'm just saying we should treat sub-par photos as sub-par photos.

FinalBaton · Post by **FinalBaton** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 6:53 pm

LEGENOARYNINLIA wrote:I'm not saying everyone needs to stop using smartphones to take photos. I'm just saying we should treat sub-par photos as sub-par photos.

Treat photos however you like. The point is that it's indeed possible to take pics that do the job with a phone camers. Of course not all phone have camera of the same quality, some have better ones than others. But my point is that a dedicated quality camera and extra lenses is not mandatory for taking nice CRT pics.

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:41 pm

Xyga wrote:
GeneraLight wrote:Amazing pictures, Brad! They really show how sharp and colorful the set is. You can clearly see scanlines too.
Sorry Brad251 and GL I don't share your enthusiasm, all I see is rather small pictures, taken too far-away from the screen showing almost no details you expect to see on good CRT photos, plus with sorta moire artifacts on top of it.
And yeah I've zoomed as much as photobuckcrap allows...

edit: I know I sound like ass but it's true, sorry

I know my photos aren't amazing and can be improved but I have seen much worse. When I got up close to the screen, the photos always turned out much worse and the moire was much more apparent. I had to stand that far away minimize the moire effect. Doesn't it make sense to take photos from farther away instead of right up to the screen because people sit several feet from the screen? I'm really just trying to give people a general idea of what games look like running on this set.

There shouldn't be anything wrong with viewing photos on photobucket. When you hit the zoom icon it is displaying the original size of the photo and the quality of the photo appears to be the same as the originals.

What details are you looking for in the photos that aren't present; aside from getting rid of the moire effect?

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:45 pm

LEGENOARYNINLIA wrote:Another two cents into the mix: photography isn't magic. You can get it to do what you want to do if you know what you are doing and work for it. Saying something generic like cellphones taking decent pics is like saying composite signal looks good. How does it look good? And with what equipment? A PCE Core Grafx looks good on a 14" Sony PVM throug composite. But a SNES on a random consumer tube doesn't. We all know that equipment matters, and photography isn't an exception to that. Those cellphone pics are overexposed and awful.

Tips that come into mind when taking photos of CRT screens:
-Learn how to use the focus in the equipment you are using. If for example you are using an auto focus auxiliary light, it's probably focusing on the outer surface of the glass of the screen.
-If you're getting moire from even colour areas from all kinds of angles then you probably should think of a different scene to take a photo from instead of looking a miraculous angle by luck that would somehow make them disappear.

A generic tip about photography:
-If you took a photo that looks nice and you didn't really put much effort into it, try putting more effort into it and taking an even better photo instead of settling for what was basically just beginner's luck.

What do you mean when you say I should think of a different scene to take a photo from?

Xyga · Post by **Xyga** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:56 pm

The moire isn't a big issue but what's important is to bring out the kind of details the screen is able to produce, since there are several types of tubes and definitions, shots from a sitting distance aren't good (unless using a quite high-end camera maybe).
The actual scanlines with the phosphors showing more or less closely is the desired kind of picture.

Check for instance the pics on this Brazilian forum: http://www.seganet.com.br/index.php?/pr ... ost&page=7
Even those aren't ideal but still give a more realistic idea of what the set reallo looks like.

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 11:08 pm

Xyga wrote:The moire isn't a big issue but what's important is to bring out the kind of details the screen is able to produce, since there are several types of tubes and definitions, shots from a sitting distance aren't good (unless using a quite high-end camera maybe).
The actual scanlines with the phosphors showing more or less closely is the desired kind of picture.

Check for instance the pics on this Brazilian forum: http://www.seganet.com.br/index.php?/pr ... ost&page=7
Even those aren't ideal but still give a more realistic idea of what the set reallo looks like.

Now I see what you mean. I will take some more photos of the screen up close and see what I can do.

LEGENOARYNINLIA · Post by **LEGENOARYNINLIA** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 12:40 am

Brad251 wrote:What do you mean when you say I should think of a different scene to take a photo from?

Usually moire is more prominent if there are even/flat colour areas like in Mario World, but apparently in your case it was mostly just the Photobucket generated thumbnails that had it and I just skipped straight into those fighting games shots.

I think the photos in your first post were fine but they were mostly the same. You can just pick the one that you think is the best. If you have four very similar photos then you are giving us whiners three more chances to moan about moire.

Like Xyga later suggested, a closeup that shows the phosphor detail would accompany the previous photos well. It's simply impossible to have everything in one photo, so don't try to achieve that.

In short, sharp and correctly exposed photos without barrel distortion like the ones you already took + some closeups is going to be a good combo. Oh, try to adjust the magenta levels down a bit from the photos. They're now a bit stuffy because of that and it will help with the overall clarity.

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 1:51 am

I wanted to note that Photobucket compresses photo uploads and I was not aware of this. I have more closely compared my original photos and the ones on Photobucket and my originals are significantly clearer. I'm going to upload my photos to another photo sharing website that doesn't compress images and then I'll post the link to the new album. I'm still going to work on taking some better photos.

Blair · Post by **Blair** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 3:06 am

maybe try imgur? (that's the one I use for all my CRT and other screenshots stuff)

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 3:53 am

I'm going through my camera's menu and have some questions about some of the options:

Should I turn "dynamic range correction" on or off?

There is a section of the menu where you can select from three different options for setting the brightness of the image and they are as follows:
1. Evaluative
-"set brightness based on overall scene
2. Center Weighted Average
-"set brightness based on the center of the scene"
3. Spot
-"set brightness based on area inside the frame"

From what I understand the lower the ISO setting the better. I had my ISO set at 800. Is that too high for taking pictures of a CRT?

Which of these options is best for taking photos of a CRT? I currently have it set to the "Spot" option.

Taiyaki · Post by **Taiyaki** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 6:57 am

Good job on taking those pictures. Would probably show up better in bigger sizes on some faster site, on these some show broken up scanlines. Otherwise though great job calibrating that. Looks like you might be able to shrink the vertical a tad and lower the picture but otherwise it's incredible.

In my opinion that's the greatest crt I've ever owned. I sold both my BVM 20G1U's after moving the FV300, and wouldn't want to go back to anything less.

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:15 am

Taiyaki wrote:Good job on taking those pictures. Would probably show up better in bigger sizes on some faster site, on these some show broken up scanlines. Otherwise though great job calibrating that. Looks like you might be able to shrink the vertical a tad and lower the picture but otherwise it's incredible.

In my opinion that's the greatest crt I've ever owned. I sold both my BVM 20G1U's after moving the FV300, and wouldn't want to go back to anything less.

Thanks. I actually have a bit of a horizontal trapezoid going on with my picture that I can't fix in the service menu. If I lowed VSIZ, if would fix that top right corner but then the top left corner would be too low, the bottom left corner would be raised too high and there would be some underscan going on. I believe the larger FV300 models and the FV310 have service menu options to fix this but the 24" FV300 does not.

tacoguy64 · Post by **tacoguy64** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 10:06 am

Those photos look quite nice. Possibly the most vibrant colors i've seen on a consumer set. Been keeping my eye out for both the 27 inch and 24 inch models but no luck so far.

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 1:35 pm

I have uploaded my CRT photos to Mediafire. Mediafire is nice because it doesn't compress the photos you upload that are below 200mb per photo, so all my photos on Mediafire are the originals. You can zoom in as much as you want.

Here is the link to my FV300 photos on Mediafire. I will update the link in my first post as well. You can select all the photos in the folder at once and then view them in gallery mode or simply download them if that is easier:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/3t1ffb ... 300_Photos

FinalBaton · Post by **FinalBaton** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 2:33 pm

mediafire worked out much better than photobucket, THAT's for sure.

I detect a bit too much red in your pics(maybe that's something your camera picked up and is not there in real life), but other than that it looks fantastic for a consumer set I think. looks like a fun picture to game on.

I'll definitely be on the lookout for a 24 inch FV300 (which seems to be the only size, along with the 20 incher, that has the BA-6 chassis). I never seem to come across one though

Ikaruga11 · Post by **Ikaruga11** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 5:46 pm

There's never ANY 300s or 310s in Ohio, and I don't have a passport or the transportation to cross the border.

austin532 · Post by **austin532** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 10:46 pm

FinalBaton wrote:I detect a bit too much red in your pics(maybe that's something your camera picked up and is not there in real life), but other than that it looks fantastic for a consumer set I think. looks like a fun picture to game on.

I'll definitely be on the lookout for a 24 inch FV300 (which seems to be the only size, along with the 20 incher, that has the BA-6 chassis). I never seem to come across one though

It's the TV. I have the FV300 as well and they have a strong push with reds. That's like the only flaw with them and other than that it's a fantastic TV. A nice alternative to a PVM. The aperture grille really makes a difference with the clarity of the picture compared to a traditional slot mask.

FinalBaton · Post by **FinalBaton** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 11:58 pm

austin532 wrote:It's the TV. I have the FV300 as well and they have a strong push with reds. That's like the only flaw with them and other than that it's a fantastic TV. A nice alternative to a PVM. The aperture grille really makes a difference with the clarity of the picture compared to a traditional slot mask.

The picture really does look nice

Taiyaki · Post by **Taiyaki** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:42 am

tacoguy64 wrote:Those photos look quite nice. Possibly the most vibrant colors i've seen on a consumer set. Been keeping my eye out for both the 27 inch and 24 inch models but no luck so far.

You could also go for the 20 inch if you find one. It's actually a fairly big 20 inch tv (it's actually 21 inch and with the flat surface you get more out of it). The mid size tv's 20/24 have the chassis that appears to be better than the large 27/32 sets for gaining better control of the reds.

Xyga · Post by **Xyga** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:52 am

21" flat Trinitrons are way easier to service in case of geometry issues. Also way easier to tate of course.
They're no PVM/BVM but the picture's still visibly clearer than most shadow mask, and for some reason at that size they kind of look better than the larger 27" despite being the same tech/gen.
Some people even find the picture 'too clean' lol. Yes really.

korpse413 · Post by **korpse413** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 4:02 pm

Not sure about other areas, but my neck of the woods seems to always be littered with free TVs on Craigslist. A few that are up for grabs right now are a KV-36FS16 and a KV-32FS13; not to mention a ton of Toshiba's (best looking one I noticed was a 32" 32A33).

I always tended to be turned off by any CRT that was flat screened - pretty much the entire WEGA line and the two I listed above. Should I give them a chance? I instantly ignore and turn away from rear projection TVs on auction sites - I do the same if I notice if its a tube flat screen. Just kind of a habit I ran into.

I own a 20" BVM right now, so I am not really in the market for anything at the moment, but once I'm in my new place I want to tinker.

Brad251 · Post by **Brad251** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 11:07 pm

korpse413 wrote:Not sure about other areas, but my neck of the woods seems to always be littered with free TVs on Craigslist. A few that are up for grabs right now are a KV-36FS16 and a KV-32FS13; not to mention a ton of Toshiba's (best looking one I noticed was a 32" 32A33).

I always tended to be turned off by any CRT that was flat screened - pretty much the entire WEGA line and the two I listed above. Should I give them a chance?

Definitely give the flat screen CRTs a chance. The FV300 is a great set and I own the KV-27FS120 which is also a great set. Most of the flat screen standard def Trinitron CRTs with component inputs should be good sets. I don't recommend the Toshiba flat screen CRTs as they have a sharpness enhancing setting known as scan velocity modulation (SVM) that can't be turned off and I feel that it makes the picture look worse. There may be some flat screen Toshiba CRT models that have the ability to turn this off but I don't know which models have this ability.

I have also owned a 27" JVC I'Art flat screen CRT which was my favorite set that I have owned. It has a really clear picture and very vibrant colors. It is a very nice shadow mask set. I think Trinitron's are great but I actually prefer shadow mask sets because that is what I and most people grew up playing on and it just feels more nostalgic. I only got rid of my JVC I'Art because no matter what level I set the user contrast at, it was way too bright and it killed my eyes to look at. This is an issue that CRTs can develop as they age and if I remember correctly it can be a problem with the transformer or some bad capacitors.

I think if you are happy with your set that is the most important thing but I should note that Taiyaki and others have gotten rid of their PVMs and BVMs and instead went with a nice standard def flat screen consumer CRT. It is all preference really, but you might be surprised how good a nice flat screen standard def consumer CRT can look.

tjstogy · Post by **tjstogy** » Fri Dec 23, 2016 5:18 am

Yeah I think consumer sets get a bad rap and IMO should be considered first and foremost over broadcast monitors. It's near impossible to find a pvm over 20" and even if it's 20" it's expensive and yes it's sharp but it's still small at only 20". More people on these forums should be pushing consumer tvs, the kind that are ending up in garbage dumps. Not in spite of it, but because they really looked great. I'm selling my pvm 20L5 now that I have a consumer Sony kv-27fv310. It's frustrating to see people thinking of the holy grail as a broadcast monitor when in reality it's nothing like you remembered. Simply not for everyone....

shmups.system11.org

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