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Author Topic: Which Projector Resolution for Photos  (Read 42002 times)

Steve Gordon

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Which Projector Resolution for Photos
« on: June 05, 2009, 08:42:28 pm »

Our camera club is looking at getting a digital projector.

Full HD projectors are quite expensive (here in Oz) and I'm wondering how much extra quality you get with full HD resolution compared to lower resolution projectors?

Is 720HD an option? Many clubs (I think) seem to be quite happy with 1024x768.

I'm sure it makes a big difference for movies but this will be exclusively used for still photography.

Thanks for any help.
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dalethorn

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« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2009, 05:50:21 pm »

Quote from: Steve Gordon
Our camera club is looking at getting a digital projector.
Full HD projectors are quite expensive (here in Oz) and I'm wondering how much extra quality you get with full HD resolution compared to lower resolution projectors?
Is 720HD an option? Many clubs (I think) seem to be quite happy with 1024x768.
I'm sure it makes a big difference for movies but this will be exclusively used for still photography.
Thanks for any help.

This is very unscientific, just my personal experience.  I bought an Epson EX-100, retail price $1000 U.S., and I got it mailorder for $900.

So far I've used it about 4 times in 3 different rooms, with excellent results. The rooms seated about 35, 50, and 100 people, with the projector about 15 to 25 feet from the screens.  It's bright enough that you can see high resolution detail and good color without turning the lights down really low.  The standard resolution is quoted as 1024 x 768, with support for up to 1600 x 1200, whatever that means (I never looked into that, because the images I showed looked better from my projector than the in-house projectors at those sites).

It's good to read a lot of reviews from different websites before you decide.
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Gordon Buck

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« Reply #2 on: June 06, 2009, 08:59:16 pm »

Our club (http://www.laphotosociety.com/) and our regional clubs all use 1024x768 projection.  No doubt this will change and change again but 1024x768 is what we've used for several years now and there are no immediate plans to change.
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samirkharusi

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« Reply #3 on: June 11, 2009, 02:32:21 am »

Quote from: Steve Gordon
Our camera club is looking at getting a digital projector.

Full HD projectors are quite expensive (here in Oz) and I'm wondering how much extra quality you get with full HD resolution compared to lower resolution projectors?

Is 720HD an option? Many clubs (I think) seem to be quite happy with 1024x768.

I'm sure it makes a big difference for movies but this will be exclusively used for still photography.

Thanks for any help.
Projecting still pictures is actually more demanding of resolution than projecting movies. That's basically why video frames can withstand far more compression than stills, the artifacts in any single video frame are overwhelmed by the subsequent frames and do not get noticed. Artifacts tend to jump around. On a still image the artifacts/imperfections just sit there to be scrutinised. In the olden days of film, home movies shot on 16mm Kodachrome proved very satisfactory, but stills required 35mm format slides for similar viewer satisfaction. I once dabbled in shooting 16mm stills slides. Awful! On a large screen (my TV is 70") I can certainly see the difference immediately between 1080 and 720 HD video. Most TV series are now delivered at 720 HD, and they do look quite a bit softer than my own home videos delivered at 1080. Of course, it all depends on viewing distance. I once worked it out and ended up with the conclusion that if the viewer has normal eyesight, he should be fully content with sitting at twice the screen size with 1080 video (or still image). I.e. when you project at 1080 onto a 6ft(diagonal)  screen, the viewer can sit at about 12 ft and the detail will be at his visual perception limit (one arc-minute? I now forget the number I used but it was similar to what is used for depth of filed calculations based on an 8x10" print held in the hand). Closer than that and he will start seeing softness or pixillation. Unfortunately for club use and for projecting stills one would be tempted to sit even closer than the 12ft in order to get an immersive experience. That's why Imax exists. I am afraid that 720 HD just makes people having to sit at 18ft rather than the 12ft mentioned. Of course this is a crude guideline but I did check it out in reality. You can also verify it on your own HD TV or any large PC monitor. In brief, a 1080 projector will enable people to sit at 2/3 the distance that a 720 projector enables, and still not notice any softness/pixillation.
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greggan

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« Reply #4 on: June 11, 2009, 08:14:38 am »

I found this thread in my search for hints of post processing for projection!

During my "kind of" review or more correctly a comparing test of the
Panasonic PT-AE3000 projector witch is 1080P=1920x1080 resolution and a good old Leica P150 slide projector
but are still wondering if it would be possible to get an even higher quality image from the Panasonic
by feeding it with better/other way of post processed files.

In my head to head review I scaled all files to 1080px high and applied some but not excessive USM.
I compared in several ways.

   1. 'slide vs scanned slide in analog vs digital projection' and
   2. 'Digital capture vs scanned slide in digital projection'


Does anyone have a better suggestion/experience of post processing for projection in 1080p?
Please let me and others take part of your thoughts and experience.

Regards/Stefan
http://www.stockholmviews.com
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Ray

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« Reply #5 on: June 11, 2009, 08:33:33 am »

I'd recommend a 50", 58", 60" or 65" plasma TV screen, according to budget. Projectors have the advantage of a larger screen, but a lower brightness and a lower contrast ratio.
With a projector, you need to turn you living room into a dark cinema theatre. In day time, it's hopeless. At night time, you need to switch off all the lights,
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greggan

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« Reply #6 on: June 11, 2009, 08:47:55 am »

But that is part of the charm with projection, the dark environment will help yo focus
on the images and screen you from disturbing subjects and object.

And it is cozy too  


Regards/Stefan
http://www.stockholmviews.com
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dalethorn

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« Reply #7 on: June 11, 2009, 09:05:27 am »

Quote from: greggan
But that is part of the charm with projection, the dark environment will help yo focus
on the images and screen you from disturbing subjects and object.
And it is cozy too  
Regards/Stefan
http://www.stockholmviews.com

With my Epson EX-100, 2600 lumens, I can project onto a plain wall in daytime, with muted light, but still bright enough to read anything printed at a comfortable distance, and the projected image is very strong and clear, with excellent detail.  I've given presentations in rooms seating 50 or more people with lights turned part way down, but still light enough to read, and the images are quite satisfactory to the audience.  I think you'll find darkness is not necessary with an equivalent projector.
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samirkharusi

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« Reply #8 on: June 11, 2009, 09:09:35 am »

Quote from: greggan
Does anyone have a better suggestion/experience of post processing for projection in 1080p?
Please let me and others take part of your thoughts and experience.
Does anyone sit down and watch a simple slide show these days? The Sony PS3 has a great "Portrait" mode slide show routine that sort of pans and zooms across a slide. The added, subtle motion really enhances the experience. With the latest version of PS3 firmware you can even play music simultaneously. No PS3? I would suggest a WD-TV (Western Digital-TV media server) at just over a $100. Put your pics and music on any USB drive and you can also play music and slides at 1080. Not as sophisticated as the PS3 (eg no auto-panning and the transitions are very basic), but at half price. Nevertheless for the ultimate slides presentation you need to put the images in a video editor and basically make an HD video, music, surround sound, fancy panning, fancy transitions, etc. It's actually highly automated once you have spent the time to learn the video-editing menus. I use PC-based Sony Vegas Platinum (under a $100) as my HD-video editor and all this stuff can be done very quickly. The results are glitch-free 1080 HD. The still pics actually get life! Panning and zooming are as simple as setting the initial framing (normally the full image), and setting the final frame (normally a crop on the center of interest). Length of the resultant video clip automatically determines the speed of the pan/zoom and the editor auto-creates all the 30 frames per second required. Hundreds of transition effects are available to the next slide in any semi-decent video editor, fades, superimposing, wipes, swirls, whatever. I think for a pro-level slides presentation this kind of video enhancement is required these days, to hold the interest of very jaded audiences, MTV generation and all that. Of course you will still need something like a WD-TV or PS3 to play back your 1080 HD video.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2009, 09:12:13 am by samirkharusi »
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Dick Roadnight

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« Reply #9 on: June 11, 2009, 10:39:22 am »

What sort of kit do your club members use?

MF film slides make 35mm slide look sick, 1080p HD TV or Blu-ray make 10 Mpx pictures taken with cameras with Anti-aliasing filters look sick.

With an anti-aliasing filter, if the light hitting each pixel can spread 1.58 pixels in any direction, then you can reduce the pixel count (down res) by a factor of 10 without degrading the picture quality much - this is one reason why a 2 Mpx HD TV picture looks as good as a 10 or 20 Mpx still picture.

It surprises me how good full HD TV (1080p) stills look when you freeze playback.

Hasselblad made MF projectors - perhaps they, or someone, will produce a high-res (60Mpx +) digital projector, but I am not holding my breath.

When I put on a slide show, I would like to print out the pictures, photograph them with ultra-fine grain film and use my Hasselblad MF slide projectors.

The nice thing about digital projectors is that you can zoom in on detail, and pan - but this only tends to work if the photographer is on the computer, as they tend to know where the sharp detail is.


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Farmer

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« Reply #10 on: June 12, 2009, 08:08:44 pm »

To put it simply, a 1080p projector makes a big difference and it's what our club went with (on my recommendation, as it happens).

1024x768 means 786,432 pixels - or about .79MP

However, if you have a dSLR with a 3:2 aspect ratio, you'll actually get 682 as your vertical resolution if you don't crop which means just 698,368 pixels displayed or about .7MP.  If you go in portrait mode you get 512x786 = 393,216 or just under 0.4MP.

If you have a 1920x1080 projector (apart from the improved colour control, contrast ratio, DVI/HDMI connection etc which are all great things) you have a potential 2,073,600 pixles or just over 2MP - more than double your 1024x768.  With a 3:2 images you can get 1620x1080 which is 1,749,600 pixels or nearly 1.75MP which is 2.5 times better than the 1024x768 in the same mode.  For portrait you get 720x1080 = 777,600 which is nearly twice portrait on a 1024x768.

If you use a 720p projector you're really no better (and for portrait you're worse off) than a 1024x768 machine.

Yes they are more expensive, but the difference is very significant.  You can have very large displays (get a quality screen, too) even in daylight (evening viewing with lights down, as you would likely have done with slides, is excellent).  For those who shoot 4:3 there's still improvement and many photographers may even crop to 16:9 or stitch panos to that aspect etc to take advantage of the extra width.  16:9 is the future for these display mediums for the forseeable future, so it makes sense to get onboard.

If your club can afford it, it's very worthwhile.  I would recommend LCD over DLP for this usage, too (nothing worse than DLP ripping that some people notice or the lack of colour saturation that tends to stand out with single DLP (3 DLP would be fine, but that's cinema level equipment far out of the budget of camera clubs), so 3 LCD is the answer.

Also, look for sponsorship from a local distributor or even from a manufacturer or consider teaming up with another local club who have different nights to you or something like that to help with the cost.

We spoke directly to the manufacturer for ours and got a unit at a very very good price because they saw the advantage in having their unit being used in a public manner like this.
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Phil Brown

Dick Roadnight

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« Reply #11 on: June 13, 2009, 06:18:41 am »

Quote from: Farmer
To put it simply, a 1080p projector makes a big difference and it's what our club went with (on my recommendation, as it happens).

Also, look for sponsorship from a local distributor or even from a manufacturer or consider teaming up with another local club who have different nights to you or something like that to help with the cost.

We spoke directly to the manufacturer for ours and got a unit at a very very good price because they saw the advantage in having their unit being used in a public manner like this.
My retailer has projection/demo rooms in Leamington Spa and South Birmingham - you might be able to use demo equipment as a stop gap.
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ErikKaffehr

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« Reply #12 on: August 15, 2009, 01:49:41 am »

Interesting comparison!

My suggestion is not so much related to sharpening but presentation.

I use either Fotomagico (on the Mac) or Picture2exe on Windoze to produce slide shows. Both programs are very flexible, allowing to do zooms and pans in the images. My hints:

- crop!
- Use zooms and pan creatively
- Portrait mode is awful on 1080P, so zoom in to full screen (for instance just showing they eyes) and then zoom out

Regarding presentation, both programs can produce an application containing everything needed to play the show. Fotomagico can export to an ".app" and Picture2exe can save as an ".exe" file. Both can export as "movie", HD movies from Fotomagico had issues with colors under MacOS X/4 (Tiger) but they may been solved under Leopard.

Here are a couple of samples:
http://83.177.178.241/ekr/multimedia/TPOI_Godafoss.mov   (1080P)
http://83.177.178.241/ekr/multimedia/TPOI_Godafoss_720p.mov (720p)

Some notes:
1) Download to your computer before playing
2) The site may be unavailable becuase of planned maintenance, if so try again

Erik



Quote from: greggan
I found this thread in my search for hints of post processing for projection!

During my "kind of" review or more correctly a comparing test of the
Panasonic PT-AE3000 projector witch is 1080P=1920x1080 resolution and a good old Leica P150 slide projector
but are still wondering if it would be possible to get an even higher quality image from the Panasonic
by feeding it with better/other way of post processed files.

In my head to head review I scaled all files to 1080px high and applied some but not excessive USM.
I compared in several ways.

   1. 'slide vs scanned slide in analog vs digital projection' and
   2. 'Digital capture vs scanned slide in digital projection'


Does anyone have a better suggestion/experience of post processing for projection in 1080p?
Please let me and others take part of your thoughts and experience.

Regards/Stefan
http://www.stockholmviews.com
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keithrsmith

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« Reply #13 on: August 15, 2009, 03:45:38 pm »

I looked into this a while ago and went for a 1400 by 1050 Canon SX60 at the time as the best that we could afford .

Keith
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Ray R

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« Reply #14 on: October 06, 2009, 12:18:47 pm »

My club has just purchased a projector. After some research we went for a Canon XEED SX7. This was in part due to other clubs experience with this in the area.
It has a resolution of 1400x1050.
We also purchased a laptop at the same time after some research into the combination. I cannot say what the laptop is at this time.
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Chris_T

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« Reply #15 on: October 22, 2009, 09:22:03 am »

I know almost nothing about projectors, so pardon my questions if they should sound stupid.

For a lcd projector to display optimally jpegs on a computer, what exactly should the jpegs' properties be, i.e. Y by Y pixel count and dpi? Should these properties be somehow related to a projector's "native" properties, i.e. resolution, etc.?

We probably would agree that jpegs for monitor viewing need not be over 100dpi. So why would many calls for submissions still ask for 150dpi or 300dpi? Does that have anything to do with viewing on a projector?

http://www.bu.edu/prc/forms/PRC_Exposure_e...010_alt_MIA.pdf

http://www.bu.edu/prc/forms/Publicationent...rmPRC09_EXT.pdf
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Jonathan Wienke

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« Reply #16 on: October 29, 2009, 01:32:39 pm »

Quote from: Chris_T
I know almost nothing about projectors, so pardon my questions if they should sound stupid.

For a lcd projector to display optimally jpegs on a computer, what exactly should the jpegs' properties be, i.e. Y by Y pixel count and dpi? Should these properties be somehow related to a projector's "native" properties, i.e. resolution, etc.?

We probably would agree that jpegs for monitor viewing need not be over 100dpi. So why would many calls for submissions still ask for 150dpi or 300dpi? Does that have anything to do with viewing on a projector?

For best display, image files should have the same pixel dimensions as the projector. When this is not the case, the projector does the image resizing, and this degrades image quality.

DPI is completely irrelevant in this context. The only thing that matters is the pixel dimensions of the image.
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Chris_T

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« Reply #17 on: November 01, 2009, 07:20:00 am »

Quote from: Jonathan Wienke
For best display, image files should have the same pixel dimensions as the projector. When this is not the case, the projector does the image resizing, and this degrades image quality.

DPI is completely irrelevant in this context. The only thing that matters is the pixel dimensions of the image.

That would be my assumption, thanks for confirming. But why would the referred calls ask for dpi?
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Jonathan Wienke

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« Reply #18 on: November 01, 2009, 07:56:20 am »

Quote from: Chris_T
That would be my assumption, thanks for confirming. But why would the referred calls ask for dpi?

Because there's a lot of people out there making their living from digital imaging who have yet to grasp some of its most basic fundamentals.
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Jim Pascoe

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« Reply #19 on: November 04, 2009, 04:58:18 am »

Quote from: Jonathan Wienke
Because there's a lot of people out there making their living from digital imaging who have yet to grasp some of its most basic fundamentals.

Love it!  I know it is slightly off-topic, but I always feel a bit bewildered when people ask me for a picture for printing and ask for it to be 300dpi.  Self doubt always makes me think they must know more than me, but surely that request is meaningless.  How do I know if it will be printed over two pages, or just a tiny picture across one column?  In my mind, they either tell me the final print size plus resolution in ppi, say 300.  Or just tell me how many pixels they want.  Am I right, or have I missed something?

Jim

PS.  Our club has a Canon SX60 and it is excellent!  Very east to use and makes our old Kodak Carousel look dim by comparison.
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