C'mon guys. Screenshots are fun so stop taking it very seriously. Use them for the meaningless fun they are but stop comparing. It's really meaningless.
Screenshots can not in any way ever represent what you actually see in person, so they cannot be used to compare one projector with another - especially when two people are taking pictures with different cameras.
Some people are fond of saying
"these are pictures directly out of the camera" as if there's no processing done. These people are completely ignorant about how digital cameras work and I pull my hair out every time I hear someone say it.
To use an analogy, it's as illogical as thinking that a song you're listening too on your stereo sounds *EXACTLY* like the original band live in person because you have your bass and treble controls on your stereo set to '0' (disabled). I'm bypassing the tone controls so therefore it sounds exactly like it did in the recording studio live and in person right? Yeah right. Everyone seems to understand why that doesn't work, but with cameras for some reason people are truly ignorant about how they work.
Cameras do all sorts of intensive *INTERNAL* processing you're not aware of (and can't and wouldn't want to disable) to recreate the JPG image including adding sharpening (it has to), making up the colours (digital cameras don't understand the concept of colour - they estimate), setting the black level to what it "thinks" is right based on the average picture level by adjusting exposure (most times the any camera will make the darkest colour black so all projectors end up with great black level), and so on. It then uses lossy compression (reducing detail) to create the final JPG.
Then to make matters worse, people take these photos, reduce the resolution to well below the original 1080p resolution, upload them to picture sharing sites which reduce the resolution and compress them even further, and then expect people looking at them on uncalibrated monitors to compare, like it means something. Huh?
Want to REALLY show what it looks like? The photos need to be shot in RAW format (only available on better cameras, mostly DSLR cameras) to bypass the internal processing and then the person has to use a calibrated work flow process using various software in order apply this processing correctly and carefully using a *calibrated* monitor and then view them on the *calibrated* monitor. Processing needs to be done. There's no way around it. This includes applying a certain level of sharpness (yes, sharpness), choosing and applying lighting colour temperature (hard to do), white balance to set the colours (digital cameras don't understand colour - it needs to be told), correct exposure to get black levels right to match what's seen in person (not what the camera thinks is black), and so on. It's very tricky.
Even if that's done correctly, a camera has a much lower contrast ratio than what our projectors do. We can't capture all the subtle gradients of light from black to white. To get around this you need to take multiple photos at different exposures and combine them using a process called HDR (high dynamic range).
Moral of the story:
I've seen shots of really cheap $50 projectors that look phenominal because the person knows what they're doing.
I've seen shots of really expensive $50,000 projectors that look like crap because the person doesn't know what they're doing.
Good screenshots are more an example of how lucky someone is or how good of a photographer they are.
Have fun, but please don't take it seriously, and please nobody respond saying "my photos are untouched". I'm going to kill someone.
Kal
![Atlas Shrugged: Part One [Blu-ray]](http://cdn.avsforum.com/1/11/50x50px-ZC-11e52775_B005N4DMMG-51bYbLn2yWL.jpeg)
.until I'm truly ready.
