are video projectors replacing laser projectors for graphics?

[flecom]

I wish this forum would be less bias. Nearly everyone here is extremely knowledgeable. The problem is you're so wrapped up in what "people should buy" and "should use" you fail to have empathy for anything outside your opinion.

holy shit a forum dedicated to lasers and such is biased towards LASERS?!? SAY IT AINT SO!!!

I don't go onto a Corvette forum and say "are Corollas replacing Corvettes?" because 1) it makes no sense, and 2) it's trolling

[JohnYayas]

holy shit a forum dedicated to lasers and such is biased towards LASERS?!? SAY IT AINT SO!!!

I don't go onto a Corvette forum and say "are Corollas replacing Corvettes?" because 1) it makes no sense, and 2) it's trolling

stop making sense. this thread will accept none of that.

[flecom]

I love that you updated your signature officially

buy pangolin

/thread

[absolom7691]

Hey guys, do you think handheld mirrors will replace galvos?

[JohnYayas]

Hey guys, do you think Listerene will replace toothpaste?

[Laser Wizardry]

" 15 characters"

[absolom7691]

Alright alright. Even though I know I shouldn't go further with the discussion as you have already found all your answers.

With a laser, there is power density. Yes, I know, that is a part of coherence but this is really was gives a laser its *punch*. The power density coupled with the pure color is what makes it unique. I have seen brightly collimated light before. Back in the day, the club light that was great at emulating a laser was the Intellabeam. It used a very bright HID lamp and dichroic color filters. It had a pinhole gobo that gave it that laser feel. That being said, it was not a laser and one could EASILY see that it was not a laser. Big thick beams that looked like a kiddie laser with pale color. Before you say "apples and oranges", I am not comparing the Intellabeam to a video projector. I understand they are widely different animals. I am just trying to illustrate that emulating something is not the same as replacing it. The most important thing with power density is, the tighter you make a laser beam, the brighter it looks and conversely, the wider you make the beam, the "dimmer" it looks. This is completely opposite for a video projector. The tighter you try to make the beam, the "dimmer" it will become. This is because you are limiting the light from the projector's light source by making a smaller "aperture" e.g. fewer pixels that let light through. For laser graphics, thick and moderately bright lines don't look nearly as good; that whole power density thing again. You want tight bright lines that will practically leave after images. That is punch. Only a laser can do this. I get that a video projector can get thin lines but as they get thinner, they lose a lot of their energy. Video projectors have their place. Can they emulate a laser? Yes. Is it passable? Yes. Can you tell the difference? YES.

[JStewart]

Last month I saw a Robert Henke installation in London, being set up with Michael Sollinger of Laser Animation. http://roberthenke.com/concerts/lumiere.html It was for a concert/artistic event. I can tell you that the superb crispness of vibrant colour, high contrast, and high resolution would have not been replicated with video projectors. The photos/video give some impression of the content, but can’t convey that ‘electric’ look and feel of laser light hitting a huge screen in an auditorium in real life.

If the same effect was achievable with video projection, then I’m sure it would have been used to the deliver the same content and emotion to the audience. Instead, I saw Michael meticulously set up 6 high power laser projectors, with perfectly matched geometry and colour balance, to achieve what was a stunning visual effect.

I lost interest in reading the ins and outs of this thread, but my overall impression is someone is looking to create/prolong an argument about the utility of laser vs video projection. Feel free to carry on. But if you ever get the chance, go along to something like one of Robert’s installations and you will see the difference firsthand, which may help you realise that laser and video projectors can coexist, having their own advantages, and one technology does not have overall superiority to the other. They are both tools for creative people to use.

The one thing that does let laser graphics down most of the time is the lack of quality content, which largely consists of cheesy/cringe-worthy basic animations.

James

[norty303]

You're projecting light onto a wall or something in both cases. In one case you're projecting a very rapidly moving light point that appears like lines to your eyes and in the other case you're projecting millions of points at the same time. What's so special about the light generated with lasers, aside from coherence?

Ok, look I think Absolom answered this well above (and I'm pretty sure I read this response on page 1 or 2 as well) but fundamentally, the laser carries all its energy in that very fine beam.
The video projector carries it whole energy across its whole projection surface (regardless of whether it's actually 'black' or showing light)

To maybe demonstrate why this makes such a massive difference, think about this...

We are now starting to use divergent lenses to make lasers safe, by spreading the power over a wider area. Even using very low magnifications we are able to reduce the power density by significant amounts.
Now imagine a VERY divergent (or convergent...) lens such as you'd find on the front of a video projector, and imagine what that does for the power density/brightness (of any beam, laser, lamp [which loses much of it's output out the sides/back too]).

Now, we've all seen that if you scan faster, your persistence of vision effect seems to show a dimming of the effect (slow down a flat beam scan if you don't believe me...), but EVEN THEN, the power density is far greater with the laser, and you get that 'ping' effect.


But fundamentally, if you want to project thin lines on a screen/wall, a video projector will do that, just as a laser projector will, but it will ALSO be able to do rich textures and complex graphics, albeit with a sacrifice of a bit of ping.


Are we done yet?









[/BuyPangoFromMe]

[JohnYayas]

Laser projectors are limited by physics. Abstracts from laser projectors don't look like their mathematical sources. So you will end up with things coming from the projector that you might not expect. It's similar to why some musicians or audiophiles prefer tube amps over solid state amps, or vinyl over CDs. Also, would you rather go see the real Mona Lisa or a picture of the Mona Lisa? What if the picture was two stories high and super ultra HD? You might rather see the two story copy but I would rather see the original. They both look the same but one is authentic and one isn't. There are intangibles that make watching something coming from a laser projector more interesting than something coming from a video projector. Just knowing that the images are coming from a light source that is a pencil thin beam is intriguing. If all you care about it is the quality of what is on the screen then perhaps a video projector is what you want. But, if you have an interest in science, technology, and the art of making a beam move around to music and present images that really aren't even there, then lasers are simply cool. It isn't a matter of what looks better on the screen. It's a matter of how it gets to the screen. If you don't understand that, you don't understand why people build projectors. Laser light shows didn't come about from people wanting to make cool videos. Laser light shows came about from scientists who found that by swirling the lasers and applying effects, some interesting things happen that don't happen with film projection. If you don't get that then you are DEFINITELY in the wrong place and you are wasting your time here.