22 FL too much?

The lamp will DIM over time, but it will be a bit much for a while. All you have to do to prevent eye strain is turn a tiny bit of light on in the back, not direct light. Once the lamp wears in, you should be fine after 200-300 hours of usage.

You can always adjust brightness on the projector, or add a filter in front of the lens if its too bright for you. Too bright is a nice problem to have.

Doesn't it have an ECO mode that lowers the light output?

You could get low gain gray screen to.

That's what I was thinking too.

What projector are you thinking of getting anyway?

Sunglasses?

Honestly, this is probably the first time anyone has ever posted anywhere about a projector being too bright. Congratulations!

If it's the Optoma hd33, there is a good chance that is the minimum he can bring the projector down to on a small screen, it's super-freaking-bright.

Wouldn't you want to see if you can get some deals in the next 2 month holiday sales? Is there a reason for the rush?

Most people don't complain about it being too bright until >40 ft/l. 22 is fine, we usually recommend 25-30 for a new bulb to maintain a minimum of 12 ft/l as the bulb ages.

I recently upgraded to a 2.6 gain screen and calculated the FL for my two projectors.

Mitsubishi HC3800: Guessing the lamp has dimmed to 75% and 1.5 gain from my seating position I get about 30 FL in best mode.

Acer H5360BD: Fresh lamp, 2.5 gain from my seating position, I get 67 FL in 3D mode.

I actually run both in eco mode, so I'm not actually getting that much. In a dark room, I think the brightness is for both projectors looks great and doesn't bother me at all. Of course for the Acer that 67 FL gets cut down significantly by the 3D glasses, and the result is vibrant, appropriately bright 3D, much better than when I used a 1.0 gain screen.

So my opinion is that no, 22 FL will not be too bright. In fact if you use the HD3300 for 3D, you might find the brightness lacking, though probably acceptable.