an apple and a projector....live

[endserenading81]

me and my band want to buy an iBook and a projector to display images behind us at our shows. what would be the best way to go about this? are there some specs that should be considered? had any luck doing this?
thank you,
rob

[arjoll]

Originally Posted by endserenading81

me and my band want to buy an iBook and a projector to display images behind us at our shows. what would be the best way to go about this? are there some specs that should be considered? had any luck doing this?
thank you,
rob

Hi Rob

I remember a band I was mixing for doing this about 11 years ago with a 'state of the art' 400 lumen projector. The results were ok-ish; you could see movement but not detail on the image. Projector placement was also a problem - short-throw lenses were not really around then!

The situation's better now. Depending on the brightness of the stage (i.e. how much lighting) you may get acceptable results from a cheap 1800 lumen projector like the Sony VPL-CS6, especially if you adjust the lighting so its not pointing directly at the image. More ambient light means more lumens required in the projector.

It also depends on what you're projecting. I regularly do Church services in the local hall, and there we found that 2000 lumens (e.g. Sony VPL-CX70; back then it was a CX6) just do the job for song lyrics, and the most recent service I had a 2500 lumen VPL-CX75 and with 12x 1000 watt par cans pointed properly - and with no gels - we could still easily read yellow on blue.

Most projectors - all the Sony compacts, for example - now have relatively short-throw lenses which make placement at lot easier. You don't usually have to put them in the middle of the audience to get a good image! The example with this one was an image of around 4m wide from about 4m back (from memory).

Hope this helps.

Cya
Andrew

[arjoll]

Remember to get the little VGA adapter cable from your Apple dealer. The iBook (and Powerbook) have a weird non-standard plug.

Cya
Andrew