The technique used to display a special theme with the led lights is pixelmapping, see also post Circle of Life – Video programming. In this pixelmapping, as it turns out, we need to take into account the way we percieve light; our eyes are far more susceptible to differences between dark and light than the brightness of light itself. So if the brightness of the leds is going from 0 to 50% output in technical terms, the change looks far more dramatic to our eyes in comparison to going from 50 to 100% output.

This is the same effect we encounter in daily life when using computerscreens, then we call it ‘gamma’. Computercreens compensate for this effect, and gamma is a measure to express this compensation. The leds however – and the pixelmapping software we are using – do not compensate for this effect, as I have learned to today. So the videos I produced were much to bright and lacked a great deal of contrast. Back to the editing table!