Epson 8700: comparable to slides?

[guyburns]

I may be about to purchase an Epson 8700 UB, but only if it can throw an image of about the same quality as my mediocre slide projector -- a Rollei P350 with a 150 Watt bulb and 85 mm lens. I'd like to hear thoughts of people who may have been in the position to directly compare images from a projector such as the Epson 8700 (or similar) and a slide projector. If the consensus is that a digital projector won't throw a comparable image, then I may not bother going any further with this. However, if I can expect an image of similar or better quality, then this is my next step:

1. Select several well-exposed Kodachrome slides and scan them with a Nikon slide scanner at 4000 dpi.

2. Edit in Photoshop so that the image looks as close as I can get to the original slide, then resample to 1440 x 1080 and dump that image in the centre of a 1920 x 1080 image with black bars on either side. I now have a 4:3 image in the centre of a 16:9 image. For the sake of this undertaking, assume the digitised images are faithful to the original slides.

3. Take my slide projector and original slides to a local seller of digital projectors, and set up the slide and digital projectors side by side, projecting onto two similar screens. The images will be the same size.

4. Compare the slides and digital versions for quality -- sharpness, contrast, brightness, colour accuracy.

5. Take light readings from the screens with a hand-held light meter so that I know the brightness levels.

Reasons for doing this? My partner has recently, and reluctantly, moved from taking slides to using a digital camera. She returned from Greenland recently with 500 images, the quality of which surprised her. Now she is quite concerned about the quality of showing the best of those images at the local camera club, walking club, and other places, where she is often asked to show her slides. We don't have a digital projector and have to use those provided by the clubs – typically cheap 720p projectors, five years old, of doubtful quality.

Since I talked her into going digital, boy am I going to get an earful if I now can't guarantee her good projected digital images. And she wants me to show her that they are not inferior to the way she has shown slides -- hence the comparison using slides as the basis.

A better test, of course, would be to take a slide and a digital image of the one scene and then compare, but that's a bit complicated to arrange.

Will a pleasant surprise be in store for me when I see digital images of my slides, or will I find myself in the dog house?

 

[BMXTRIX]

I've seen both, but not side by side, and frankly I just haven't been as focussed on the quality differences between the two. I stepped away from a photography major when I recognized that the world was going digital and photography was a pretty lousy career choice for all but a select (and very dedicated) few. A great hobby for many!

I would say that the Epson is ane excellent contender for the quality you are looking for. The better JVC projectors would be as well.

The resolution differences are obviously worth noting, but an original slide, and original digital photos have far higher resolution than 1080p. This is one of the biggest issues I have with the film to projection conversion. You definitely lose a lot of depth in your image due to the loss in resolution. This can be alleviated by dropping the image size on screen and by ensuring your setup is running perfectly - which will take some tweaking.

Reviews are up on various sites for the 8700UB and it seems solid.

The JVC HD250 doesn't have a color management system, which may make color matching difficult, so if you were going with a really good projector, the better JVC models would probably do a better job overall, but this improvement would be minimal I would expect.

Like good camera gear, the difference of thousands of dollars with projection tends to come down to tiny tweaks in color, lens quality, etc. Not night and day, but improvements nonetheless.

A very good starting point I would call the 8700UB.

 

[guyburns]

Thanks for the detailed response, BMXTRIX. I think I'll go ahead and do a side-by-side comparison of my slide projector, an Epson and a JVC. A local dealer has the two projectors in stock and is quite happy to let me play around for a few hours. But it won't be the 4700UB as that model is not available in Australia. It'll be the 4500UB (10-bit colour rather than 12-bit colour of the 4700UB).

A question re the 4700
The manual says the AC power supply is from 110 - 250 volts. Does that mean the units can be used anywhere? i.e. that the power supply works from 110-250 without the user having to do anything.

Other than warranty issues, are there any reasons why I should be wary of buying the 4700 from the US for use in Australia. The price differential is ridiculous: $3800 for the 4500UB in Australia, and less than $2500 for the 4700UB air-freighted from the US -- and it comes with a free spare bulb.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I don't know how it works with Epson, but I know when I got my Panasonic projector it was packed with like 12 different power cords because it basically is a single design to work anywhere in the world.

I won't swear by that. As a US citizen I kind of don't get down under all that often. Hope you understand.

If possible, you may want to give Epson a call to confirm that it should not be an issue.

 

[guyburns]

In my second post above, it should read 8700UB (not 4700 UB).

 

[guyburns]

I've been able to do two tests of my existing slide projector versus digital projection: one with a Sony Bravia 46" TV and the other with a Benq 721c projector. Both tests were side-by-side with the slide projector, the digital equivalents being a scanned version of the image.

I was mostly interested in the brightest difference and I was quite surprised. For the same size image, the Bravia had 4.5 stops more light and the Benq 1 stop more light as measured by a light meter. So there's no question that digital is bright enough. Now all I have to do is check out the 8700UB or Benq W6000 for a comparison of image quality.