Suggestions for Projector

I'm in a similar situation. We meet at a member's home and she has a cheapish projector. Quite often we end up looking at the laptop screen anyway because the projector has poor dynamic range and some colours don't render properly.

I certainly would not buy a low cost projector without actually viewing it the problem is that very few of the surviving camera shops stock such things and buying online would probably lead to a series of returns.

Maybe you should try looking in a big electronics shop for cheap TVs. In the UK Currys for example has two or three JVC 'Android screens ' in the 40" range.

Thanks for the reply. I did think about a TV or monitor instead but I'd have to lug it to the hall every week and store it at home somewhere (our home is small).

I was heavily involved in buying a new projector for my camera club about 6 years ago. Our main requirement was to get one that was good enough for competitions. It took 6-9 months and a huge amount of work. We finished up spending about £3000, but the results are very good and in a totally different class to our old projector. We have about 60 club members and project onto about a 6ft x 8ft screen.

I am not up to date on the quality that you can get from cheap projectors nowadays, so what I am going to say may be out of date.

Although the projector will produce a bigger image, in your price range expect the image quality to be significantly inferior to the laptop screen. I think that the main problem will be that you aren't projecting in a blacked out room in summer. That is likely to mean a very washed out image. Colours are likely to be inaccurate. Don't buy any projector without trying it out first in your meeting room in daylight conditions.

I think that a TV or a larger external monitor is the way to go if you can find a way to handle the logistics.

J Peters said:

Not really a beginner's question but I didn't know where else to post.

I help run a small local photography club. We all used to print our photos every week and bring them in, but I think we all realised at some point this gets expensive, and we've migrated towards showing them on a laptop.

I'm considering buying a projector for this. The picture would not have to be huge, but should be a significant improvement on a laptop screen. I'm thinking maybe 40". The hall has no curtains but the windows are small. In summer this means the room is light but not bright. We don't show video footage so good sound is not important.

I'm looking for suggestions (I'm in the UK). I would be buying out my own pocket so I'm talking low budget. There are loads of projectors around for £70 to £150. Are these any good or are they a waste of time?

Click to expand...

Check the native resolution of the cheap projectors. The really cheap projectors in my area are only 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 800. The sales materials talk about accepting HDMI, 1080p, and 4k inputs, but what gets projected on the screen is low resolution. Would that work for your photo club?

Also, check on the availability of replacement lamps. They do work for a while, but people start complaining about color well before their rated lifetime.

Thank you everyone who replied. I thought these cheap jobbies sounded too good to be true and you've confirmed that. I am disappointed, but not as disappointed as I would have been shelling out money for something that doesn't do the job.

I will have a think about a TV and the storage options.

we bought a projector for my daughter at college so she could watch movies with friends in her dorm room during the pandemic. i spent quite a bit of time looking at them and decided the lower cost ones were not worth buying. but around the $500 or $600 mark they got to be worth having. we ended up getting her a Viewsonic M2e with 1000 lumen brightness and she used it a lot and was quite happy with it

some of the things i was looking for were to have LED illumination so there would be less heat so there would not be a loud cooling fan. also having keystone correction optics so in a small room one could still get rectangular images. and good built in speakers.

I've had three projectors over the years. I wouldn't recommend any of them for this purpose. "Home cinema" projectors provide good colors but aren't super bright and mine were big and heavy. I also had a portable projector about a decade ago, which was (of course) pretty small and light, and also bright, but the colors were just not very good. You wouldn't want to use one of those to look at photos.

I'd go for a TV and find a way to leave it at the place during the week.

I paid $800 for an Epson (halogen bulb) projector and now I see ones with similar specs for $80 (LED).

As long as it's bright enough, has the right inputs, and can do keystone adjustments, I don't see how you can go wrong.

J Peters said:

Not really a beginner's question but I didn't know where else to post.

I help run a small local photography club. We all used to print our photos every week and bring them in, but I think we all realised at some point this gets expensive, and we've migrated towards showing them on a laptop.

I'm considering buying a projector for this. The picture would not have to be huge, but should be a significant improvement on a laptop screen. I'm thinking maybe 40". The hall has no curtains but the windows are small. In summer this means the room is light but not bright. We don't show video footage so good sound is not important.

I'm looking for suggestions (I'm in the UK). I would be buying out my own pocket so I'm talking low budget. There are loads of projectors around for £70 to £150. Are these any good or are they a waste of time?

Click to expand...

There's a few things to consider: resolution, throw, and lumens.

Epson has a nice guide:

Here's another nice reference site:

You’ll never go to a movie theater with windows. In fact, they are extremely dark. If you want quality display, you need a dark room. And you’ll need to pay more than 150 pounds.

thinkinginimages said:

J Peters said:

Not really a beginner's question but I didn't know where else to post.

I help run a small local photography club. We all used to print our photos every week and bring them in, but I think we all realised at some point this gets expensive, and we've migrated towards showing them on a laptop.

I'm considering buying a projector for this. The picture would not have to be huge, but should be a significant improvement on a laptop screen. I'm thinking maybe 40". The hall has no curtains but the windows are small. In summer this means the room is light but not bright. We don't show video footage so good sound is not important.

I'm looking for suggestions (I'm in the UK). I would be buying out my own pocket so I'm talking low budget. There are loads of projectors around for £70 to £150. Are these any good or are they a waste of time?

Click to expand...

There's a few things to consider: resolution, throw, and lumens.

Epson has a nice guide:
https://epson.com/projector-guide-how-to-buy-a-projector

Here's another nice reference site:
https://www.projectorreviews.com/

Click to expand...

My problem with those articles is that they seem to be aimed at home cinema users and use phrases like "more vibrant and immersive colours" and higher contrast. That sounds like the opposite of what a camera club wants - accurate lightness and colours when compared to a print or the image on a properly colour profiled monitor.

I was involved when my camera club chose a new projector a few years ago and we made sure before the purchase that three of the best photographers in the club were happy with the projections of their own images on our screen and in the light conditions in our meeting hall.

Chris R-UK said:

thinkinginimages said:

J Peters said:

Not really a beginner's question but I didn't know where else to post.

I help run a small local photography club. We all used to print our photos every week and bring them in, but I think we all realised at some point this gets expensive, and we've migrated towards showing them on a laptop.

I'm considering buying a projector for this. The picture would not have to be huge, but should be a significant improvement on a laptop screen. I'm thinking maybe 40". The hall has no curtains but the windows are small. In summer this means the room is light but not bright. We don't show video footage so good sound is not important.

I'm looking for suggestions (I'm in the UK). I would be buying out my own pocket so I'm talking low budget. There are loads of projectors around for £70 to £150. Are these any good or are they a waste of time?

Click to expand...

There's a few things to consider: resolution, throw, and lumens.

Epson has a nice guide:
https://epson.com/projector-guide-how-to-buy-a-projector

Here's another nice reference site:
https://www.projectorreviews.com/

Click to expand...

My problem with those articles is that they seem to be aimed at home cinema users and use phrases like "more vibrant and immersive colours" and higher contrast. That sounds like the opposite of what a camera club wants - accurate lightness and colours when compared to a print or the image on a properly colour profiled monitor.

I was involved when my camera club chose a new projector a few years ago and we made sure before the purchase that three of the best photographers in the club were happy with the projections of their own images on our screen and in the light conditions in our meeting hall.

Click to expand...

You managed to get "three of the best photographers in the club were happy"? Wow. That's an impressive achievement right there.

Yep, there's a lot of hyperbole. The projector spectrum runs from "barely good enough for PowerPoint" to "Home Theatre", whatever that means. Small seats? Popcorn? Sticky floors?

And then there's screens. Different surfaces reflect differently.

Lumens, resolution, and throw matter. A bright projector is needed so you don't have to be in a very dark room. Resolution is because you want to show photos as sharp as possible. (Are you using an 800x600 display at home. Nope.) Throw matter in two different ways. You want to fill the screen from a reasonable distance. A zoom lens doesn't always cover enough range.

Color accuracy can be computer dependent. I left out computers and connections. Thankfully many portable computers have HDMI out. For fun, you could project using a Chromecast or AppleTV...

thinkinginimages said:

Chris R-UK said:

thinkinginimages said:

J Peters said:

Not really a beginner's question but I didn't know where else to post.

I help run a small local photography club. We all used to print our photos every week and bring them in, but I think we all realised at some point this gets expensive, and we've migrated towards showing them on a laptop.

I'm considering buying a projector for this. The picture would not have to be huge, but should be a significant improvement on a laptop screen. I'm thinking maybe 40". The hall has no curtains but the windows are small. In summer this means the room is light but not bright. We don't show video footage so good sound is not important.

I'm looking for suggestions (I'm in the UK). I would be buying out my own pocket so I'm talking low budget. There are loads of projectors around for £70 to £150. Are these any good or are they a waste of time?

Click to expand...

There's a few things to consider: resolution, throw, and lumens.

Epson has a nice guide:
https://epson.com/projector-guide-how-to-buy-a-projector

Here's another nice reference site:
https://www.projectorreviews.com/

Click to expand...

My problem with those articles is that they seem to be aimed at home cinema users and use phrases like "more vibrant and immersive colours" and higher contrast. That sounds like the opposite of what a camera club wants - accurate lightness and colours when compared to a print or the image on a properly colour profiled monitor.

I was involved when my camera club chose a new projector a few years ago and we made sure before the purchase that three of the best photographers in the club were happy with the projections of their own images on our screen and in the light conditions in our meeting hall.

Click to expand...

You managed to get "three of the best photographers in the club were happy"? Wow. That's an impressive achievement right there.

Click to expand...

We had the old projector set up as well as a comparison. It wasn't difficult to persuade them that, while not perfect, the new projector was very much better.

After using 120 euro Xiaomi i concluded that economy projectors are barely decent for video, but they are definitely not suited for static images.

Any old LCD tv would do a better job.

Thanks again for all the advice. Given the majority have steered me away from a projector, I'm now looking at getting a TV or monitor.

Most TVs have a USB socket so we could view photos directly (eliminating the need for a laptop = one less thing to carry back and forth to the hall).

Has anyone got any experience of viewing an SD card on one of these, via a USB card reader? Do card readers work on a 'dumb' device like a TV, or do they require something that runs an Operating System with the relevant driver?

Alternatively I may need to look for a TV with an SD card slot (if such a thing exists).

Thank you.

J Peters said:

Most TVs have a USB socket so we could view photos directly (eliminating the need for a laptop = one less thing to carry back and forth to the hall).

Has anyone got any experience of viewing an SD card on one of these, via a USB card reader?

Click to expand...

Good question. I just had a quick try with SD cards from my Nikon D7100 and Z fc on my LG OLED TV with a no name SD card reader.

As I've experienced with other devices, the SD card simply shows up as USB storage. So the TV "sees" the SD cards just fine.

And it loaded the handful of blurry photos from the D7100 without trouble. (I really need to take that poor aging D7100 out again one of these days. )

Now if I'd had some "real" photos on the D7100 card I wouldn't have tried the card from the Z fc... which didn't work. The TV offered to format it, though. )

I did some checking and it turns out that the Z fc card is formatted as exFAT while the D7100 card is formatted as FAT32. And the LG TV will read FAT32 but not exFAT.

My Canon and Panasonic compact cameras also have their memory cards formatted as FAT32, a rather old format that enjoys the widest possible support.

I believe, but can't be sure, that all the cards were at one point formatted in-camera. Note though that the Z fc will happily work with a FAT32-formatted card.

So I'd say if you go shopping for TVs, bring a card reader and try this out to make sure. Otherwise you may have to tell some people they need to have their cards formatted as FAT32 and I'm sure that will be a hassle.

Note that a simple way to see if something is FAT32 or not is to try to copy a file that's 5 GB or larger to it. FAT32 can't handle that.

Very informative thank you so much. I hadn't considered the disk format of the card.

It has been a couple years ago since I displayed my SD card on a TV monitor. It was a matter of plugging in the card then pushing buttons on the remote control to find the way to display them.

I imagine there are hundreds of ways manufacturers may have implemented things, I have not tried using an SD card plugged into an adaptor to USB.

J Peters said:

Thanks again for all the advice. Given the majority have steered me away from a projector, I'm now looking at getting a TV or monitor.

Most TVs have a USB socket so we could view photos directly (eliminating the need for a laptop = one less thing to carry back and forth to the hall).

Has anyone got any experience of viewing an SD card on one of these, via a USB card reader? Do card readers work on a 'dumb' device like a TV, or do they require something that runs an Operating System with the relevant driver?

Alternatively I may need to look for a TV with an SD card slot (if such a thing exists).

Thank you.

Click to expand...

Some (most ?) larger TVs allow you to “cast” the image over Wi-Fi from a computer or a phone. This may be easier if there’s a group of people wanting to display images - it’s easier to e-mail separate images to one person than to get them all on a single SD/USB stick. There are devices available for ~£40 which can be added to a non-smart TV to allow this functionality e.g. Amazon FireStick or Roku players