NOPS Chairman announces new projector

Presenting the BenQ W300 – The club’s new projector.

 

For a time now there’s been the occasional muttering, odd comment and random complaint that the club’s projector was less than perfect and didn’t really project a good image.

I can’t say I’d noticed myself (sic), my photography is usually better hidden anyway. I have to admit, I’ve heard it said that the contrast was wrong, it didn’t provide good colour reproduction and what was on the laptop screen, invariably bore no resemblance to the image being projected… (Remember that phrase). Recently the additional effect of pixilation on the screen, providing lots of indiscriminate randomly thrown white dots all over the bottom right hand side of the screen during projection, which I’m told is down to the chip failing, has caused additional amusement, frustration and clearly presented us with a new repertoire of additional and unrepeatable comments.

 

As a committee, there has been discussion for some time around the need for a new projector. (Yes, we got the message that all was not well in the Shangri ‘la of our clubroom). We’ve had a sum of money set aside for the new one for a while, but we also had specific criteria.

  1. It had to be better than the last one…. not hard really.
  2. We had to try and future proof ourselves to some degree, not easy in this world of ever changing technical advancement.
  3. It had to be within budget. Our upper limit was set at £2000.00.
  4. It had to produce good reproduction of the images across the range.
  5. It had to provide a better choice of resolutions from our current 1024×768.

 

On Tuesday 23rd August 2016, thanks to Lester, myself, John Young, Lester Woodward and Tom Cross, highjacked the demonstration room at Richer Sounds, Mansfield Road, Nottingham. Armed with the club laptop, the members images, we settled in to test-drive their display projectors.

 

The first up was a Samsung, priced at £1000.00. It was ok, but really it was only just OK. We tweaked this, adjusted that, tried images at 5 different resolutions, including 1024×768 (NOPS current standard), 1400×1050 (N&EMPF standard) and 1900×1200 (potentially the future), all were, again, just ok.

 

Moving on to Epson, we tried one at £1100.00. What a house brick that is. Apart from being double the physical size of the Samsung, it did little to impress me. Lester was happier with it, but for me there seemed to be little in the way of image improvement for the extra cash.

 

Lester then suggested that we review the BenQ W3000. This is approximately the same size as the Samsung, and it’s considerably smaller than the EPSON. Fortunately, (Ill explain later why fortunately), there wasn’t one set up at the time but, we were advised that one was available and had been taken out of the box for demo/examination purposes only and then put back in it’s box. It was duly produced, we got connected, fired up the projector and laptop, and dimmed the lights. As it lit up the screen and the images started to show, the collective, simultaneous, spontaneous, statement appeared to come from one voice. Wow!

This machine, right out of the box, totally un-calibrated to our laptop, was reproducing the images with a quality that were clearly amazing. The colour reproduction “almost” spot on, the clarity and contrast was brilliant. Researching the product, “Which” rate this as 5* and with no negative comments for the price of the machine.

 

It was agreed in seconds that this was our now club projector. At a cost of £1378.00 it was within budget. We had support from the committee to go ahead and do the deal. The statement “fortunately there wasn’t one set up” was now going to pay dividend. Thanks to Richer Sounds, “open box” policy, we were given an immediate £300.000 discount. John Young did the necessary purchase for us and in doing so, as he’s a member of their “fan club”, he obtained a further discount for us. In “our opinion” we had a superior machine, but the proof of the pudding as the saying goes…

 

On 25th August 2016, John Young and Tom Cross took care of the calibration side, coming to the clubroom early and setting the whole thing up in the “clubs” working environment. My thanks go to them for the extra work undertaken. It was also the evening of the 4th DPI competition, what better baptism could we give it? Alan Young (no relation to John I’m told, but I’m still checking as John won the themed section), was our judge. The lights went down and we were off. From the outset, there was a tremendously clear improvement on screen and noticeably fewer complaints. We were not presented with the situation of having to tell the judge, “the details were in the shadow on the laptop, they just weren’t in the projected image” and other such remarks, we could all see the details on screen. The colours, should I say it, were being “faithfully” reproduced. In fact the images were that well displayed, flaws hidden by the previous projector were clearly showing up now. (Ladies and Gents, we can no longer hide our flaws. I know I’m going to be in trouble now).

 

One image saw the judge check that laptop screen and brought for the comment, “It’s displaying what’s on the laptop, the problem is with the image”. I punched the air with a produced a very verbal “YES!”

 

I know, totally unacceptable behaviour from a chairman, should know better and I’m sorry if I disturbed anyone when I did that, but that’s a comment never made by any judge with the old machine. It’s seems we now have a machine that will do everyone members images the justice and quality reproduction that they deserve.

 

I hope that we receive long life and good service from our new acquisition.

 

Images of the new machine as presented by Projectorshop24 for members to view, click here

 

George Reilly (Chairman 2014-2017)

Nottingham Outlaws Photographic Society.