Panny AE700 throw distance help needed

[jmbrailsford]

Hi,
can anyone help me, I'm in the latter stages of our garage conversion and have been fiddling about with the projector and screen, however after trying it last night on my new Ellie Screen I thought the picture wasn't as bright as it could have been.

Having thought about it most of the night, it suddenly occured to me that I was having to zoom the picture right up to fill the screen and I would assume that zooming will reduce brightness.

I have just had a look at both calculators on Projector Central, the Pro version gives me one answer and the older version gives me another.

My equipment details are as follows:

PANASONIC AE700 ( Bulb on 200Hrs)
ELLIE ADVANTAGE 203CM (234CM DIAG) 16:9 SCREEN 1.2 GAIN
DENON 2910 DVD VIA HDMI

It will probably only be used at night time in a very dark room.

Now at the moment I had planned to fit the PJ at about 3 to 3.25m from the screen, however both the calcultors above say I need to be a bit further back at say 4.5m + this would give me a zoom ratio of between 1.13X and 1.29X depending on which calculator you use.

This is obviously better than the current zoom ration which is about 1.7X - 1.9X ( 2 is the max ! )

Any help/info would be a great help - oh and any idea how to break it to the wife that some of the floor boards in two rooms are having to come up if I decide to move the PJ position !!!

If I need to move it I'd rather do it now as work is still ongoing.

[fallwood]

The closer you have the pj to the screen the brighter the image, I have mine at 2.5m from the screen, this gives a 5.5ft image on full zoom, the zoom doesnt effect the brightness its the distance from screen and overall image size that effects brightness, my image is considerably brighter than my friends who has his mounted 13 ft from screen with very little zoom producing a 6.5ft image, basically mount the pj as close to the screen as you can whilst acheiving your desired image size, usually this involves ceiling mounting as the pj will be in the middle of the room. I have heard the going to either extremety on the zoom can effect picture quality but I havent noticed any degredation using full 2x zoom.

[jmbrailsford]

Thanks for the help,

Anyone else any thoughts that might help me?