Canon LV-8310

Peak Brightness (9.29)

The LV8310 has some power behind it: we measured the highest white screen lumen output of this projector at 2570 lumens in presentation mode. That’s a little below the 3000 that Canon claims, but it’s a pretty decent number for a sub-$1000 projector. The projector outputs less in the other modes: the standard mode managed 2120 lumens, while the cinema and video mode managed about 1720. That’s not surprising; we usually see a reduction in the lumens the projector outputs for modes where color accuracy is more important than brightness.

On our 80-inch test screen, this translated into a screen brightness of 488 Cd/m2, as bright as a decent HDTV. However, you should consider that, like all projectors, the screen is much more sensitive to ambient light, so a projector will look much worse in anything other than near-total darkness than a HDTV.

Peak Brightness

The LV-8310 compares well with the other projectors, although it is a close thing. The Epson 705HD has nearly the same brightness, but in a smaller, more compact package.

Tunnel Contrast (4.82)

The peak brightness that a projector can produce is only half of the story: it also has to be able to produce deep, dark blacks at the same time. We found that the LV-8310 struggled a bit here: in our test of how well the blacks held up when surrounded by an increasing amount of white, the blacks quickly became muddy greys. To be fair, all projectors struggle with this test, and the LV-8310 is not much worse than others, but it is still disappointing to see.

Tunnel Contrast

Uniformity (9.00)

We found that the LV-8310 produced clean, uniform screens when showing both black and white screens. We did notice some noticeable drop-off in the top left and top/bottom right corners, though, but this was subtle and wasn’t particularly visible when watching normal video.

Uniformity

Below are two photos of the projected image, showing an all white and all black screen. Note that these have been processed to enhance the uniformity differences.

White Screen	Black Screen

Greyscale Gamma (10.00)

We measured the greyscale gamma of the image that this projector produced at 2.19, right in the 2.1 to 2.2 range that we look for as being ideal. This was with the projector in the cinema mode with the gamma control set to Natural.

Greyscale Gamma

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