Movie Projector Question

[hendra]

Can anyone explain to me why a film that is just 1" across doesn't look like crap when you blow it up to 1000" with a projector in a movie theater?

[Gohanto]

To be fair 35mm is almost 1.4" ...

Super high resolution is the answer to your question, but I'm not really sure what you're asking.

[Blu-Dog]

Originally Posted by hendra

Can anyone explain to me why a film that is just 1" across doesn't look like crap when you blow it up to 1000" with a projector in a movie theater?

Sometimes it does....

The two factors are optics, and source material. The experts will chime in, but bottom line, the lenses use are so incredibly precise, that they magnify that image without messing it up. If you've ever seen one of those old silent movie theaters, the rooms are actually pretty small; it was difficult to make lenses that were precise enough to make a very large image. It would blur if you made it over 100" or so back in the 1920's.

It was Zeiss that really focused on film optics. Gradually, they increased the size and precision of the optics, so even tiny sources (16mm for example) could be blown up to large size. But that became the limiting factor; you can only make 16mm go so big before the lense grew huge.

At that point, source material became important. Film emulsions - the material used to make the film strip - had to use finer materials, so there wouldn't be as much magnified grain. Size was increased to 35mm, the emulsion much finer, and bigger screens were the result.

Later, size increased to 70mm (almost 3 inches) for special processes like Panavision. This made it easier for a large lens to make a huge image. Finally, IMAX came up with film stock that's about 10 times the size of regular 35mm stock - with incredibly large lenses, of amazing precision.

As long as the film stock has very tight emulsion, the precise image can be enlarged to huge size, with the limit being the precision of the lens.

The new DLP process, using mirrors, is so technical I'm still trying to figure it out, so maybe somebody with more expertise can help explain that.

[Suntory_Times]

Originally Posted by Blu-Dog

The new DLP process, using mirrors, is so technical I'm still trying to figure it out, so maybe somebody with more expertise can help explain that.

Magic