Using a 4K UHD Projector for Cinematography

As all facets of technology take large, confident strides forward, there are many unintended synergies and applications between them. One example of this, which is still relatively new to being viable, is using a projector as a background for photography and videography.

Perhaps I'm showing my age, but when I think of projectors, it's difficult for me to not imagine what was rolled out during my time at school for a dreadful presentation of some kind. It would require complete darkness and would blast out a flickering cone of light at a board or wall. The contrast of the resulting images was horrendous and made watching the videos or slides from these projectors unenjoyable. However, a decade or so ago, I noticed a change.

There had always been better projectors available, but for consumers, they were either exceptionally expensive or unusable. Then, a friend of mine bought one around 10 years ago that was top-of-the-range for consumers and it wasn't far short of an HD television. Since then, huge leaps forward have been possible and now we are seeing new applications of projectors entirely. 

In this video, Film Riot test out a high-end LG projector for use as a background in cinematography.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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2 Comments

Another option is a STP if you don't have the space, and a studio is dark enough to be able to give excellent imagery without the need for projector panel.

If you doing video, a 1080 projector will do just fine and if you do photos, I do scenes with a Bokeh feel so I really don’t need UHD. You do need a projector with high brightness AND good Dynamic Range.