Projectors Hate Bright Spaces

If I had a dollar for every time I had to talk someone out of still trying to use a projector in a bright exhibition space, I’d have … uh … many dollars.

Anyway, it happens a lot. Despite our optimism that it will work anyway.

Here’s why it won’t. Ever.

Projectors project photons, those teensy light particles. They are stubborn critters: they zoom to the first thing they come to, reflect off it, zoom your way, and go through the hole in your eyeball.

If photons from a nearby light bulb — or if we’re really unlucky, that really big light bulb in the sky — also hit that surface, they make a second glowing shape in the same place. Those reflected photons also enter your eye at the same time.

Complicated-Sounding But Actually-Easy Quiz:
If more of the photons entering your eye are reflected from bright sources other than the image you are looking at, how will the image look?

Washed out. Black colors will look grey. Grey will almost vanish. Light yellow: gone.

So much for our groundbreaking night vision footage of a cheetah.

Or any footage, really.

Here’s the thing:
Photons will be photons. Projectors hate bright spaces — regardless of our optimism.

Warmly,
Jonathan

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MtM Word of the Day:
Gate. The revenues a museum makes from ticket sales to enter its exhibitions. "The Museum of Forks made more last year from the gate than from rentals." Taking steps to increase gate can help offset other revenue losses such as, ahem, federal funding.