Colour Question

skakruk

Active member
On my 1 month old Optimus Ive noticed that the colours on the bottom of the screen appear lighter than on the very top. The difference isnt that great, but I was wondering if its a sign of a problem or just due to light source being located at the bottom of the screen?
 

pengipete

Rising Star
It just means that you've got the lid too vertical for your viewing position - tilt it back a bit further. It's a "feature" of LCD screens - the contrast varies according to the viewing angle and with laptops being so close to your eyes, there's a big difference in the viewing angle between the top and bottom of the screen. You can see this effect better if you move the laptop slightly further away - the difference lessens.
 
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skakruk

Active member
Thats what I thought at first but the angle seemed a bit too extreme :) So thats not the problem.
 
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pengipete

Rising Star
It's difficult to suggest any other answer without being able to see how pronounced the difference actually is. The one thing I can say is that it's not a sign of a technical fault because LCD screens don't fade out in the way that interlaced CRTs can. There is a light on LCD screens and it does sometimes appear as a bright area but it will usually look just like a light shining at one small area - not as the whole bottom of the screen.

Perhaps you could give a better description - "the angle seemed a bit too extreme" doesn't really allow us to picture what you are seeing. Viewing angles aren'tjust about the position of the screen - it's about the position and angle relative to your eyes. If you are very tall and have the laptop flat on your knees, for example, you'd actually need to tilt the screen back as far as it will go to to get reasonably even tone on an LCD screen.

Try an experiment - have the screen vertical and lift the laptop up so that the centre of the screen is at eye-level and held at arms' length away from you. If the colours and lighting seem more even across the whole height and width of the screen then your uneven lighting is just down to the viewing angle. If not, can you take a photo that clearly shows the the variation - you'll need to have the screen upright and the camera shooting completely horizontal and level with the centre of the screen. If you upload that photo to a hosting site like Flickr and post a link, we can see exectly what your are seeing.

It's possible that there is light leaking from the backlighting - unlikely but possible- and if it is severe, it could point to the screen being incorrectly fitted or the bezel being warped. If it is distracting, it could cause eye strain so it may be something that needs sorting.
 

skakruk

Active member
I've put 4 sets of blue, green, and red circles in the 4 corners of the screen and tried viewing at different positions, angles and lightning, the brightness does differ from top to bottom but is really not that severe (only noticeable in the scenario i've described or on pictures with same colour on top and bottom).
The main purpose of my post was to find out whether this hints future problems - which doesn't seem to be the case. Thank you for the responses and have a nice day.

P.S. Trying to eliminate reflection and light sources to take a proper picture of a lit lcd screen is a royal pain! The one called flash (using a camera flash) is closest to what I'm seeing at the time from somewhat centred point of view. Ignore the flare. The difference is clearer on the green spots.
http://img337.imageshack.us/i/flashlv.jpg/
without flash
http://img837.imageshack.us/i/noflashe.jpg/
 
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PCS

Administrator
Staff member
I think the first post from pengipete is spot on here, and wouldn't worry about it - different screens have different viewing angles, and when the laptop screen is tilted the colours will vary with the viewing angle.
 
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