We need a projector for Art!

[jng]

So, generally I'm pretty decent at spec'ing out stuff for work, which is at a school. But this has sorta stumped me.

So, we want to buy from projector people (not my decision). But if you find a projector elsewhere that will fit the constraints below, let me know.

The projector will be used for an art history class. The classroom is rather large. The teacher wants to project it 10 feet wide (a little less ok). So width of two paintings side by side = 10 feet.

Budget: $2500 or less.

We can project it either from mid room (there's a hole in the furniture setup - u-shaped socratic seminar style) or from the back of the room.

Mid room, about 10-15 feet away, it cannot project 10 feet wide on a screen. Someone else did a calculation and said we'd need a wide angle zoom lens with 1.0 focal point or something, whereas the projectors we found started at about 1.8-2.2. Does that sound about right?

From that we concluded that the projector would need to be in the back of the room. We have an NEC LT35, which is a great little thing. We tried it in the back of the room, but the 3000 lumens was not strong enough to project strongly onto a screen at the front of the room. So we want something at least 3500, I think.

The room is approximately 40ft x 30ft and has three super large windows on one side and gets a good deal of sunlight. We of course have shades. But ideally, we'd rather not have lessons in a dark room.

Any ideas?

 

[jng]

Wow, no one?

Another thought: if it's ceiling mounted, can we make it work?

 

[Addo]

Not entirely sure if it would be within budget but take a look at the Sanyo range - the XP-57 is fairly cheap and the brightness is around 5k.

Really it depends on your throw distance - most projectors have interchangeable lenses, I know most of the Sanyo range do but the optional lenses can cost almost as much if not more than the actual projector itself!

Also if you can get away with it I'd personally avoid if possible lens that offer a 1:1 throw ratio (1 foot projection distance will give a 1 foot wide projected image) - I've found that they can distort the image, that is the image won't be perfectly rectangular - think of a fisheye lens on a camera but not as extreme!


If you celing mount the projector it will give you a better throw distance and it should make it cheaper as you won't need to buy another lens! Pretty much all projectors can be celing mounted - you'd just need to budget for the ceiling bracket as well as the projector!

Also another projector brand that springs to mind would be Panansonic. Most if not all Panasonics use DLP as opposed to LCD technology.
I know there is a 5k model - can't think of the model number but it ends in either 5500 or 5600 and if I remember rightly they can be found quite cheaply!


If it's possible try to get whatever company you use to demo the projectors side by side, that may not be possible though, but at least you could see the same image on different projectors and try to work out which one looks best to you.

Hope that helps a little! 🙂