Image Is Everything: ACMI Employs Panasonic DLP Laser Projectors in $40M Museum Revamp

The Story of the Moving Image is replete with display technologies — with more than 100 Panasonic commercial LCD panels and 20-plus Panasonic DLP laser projectors. It’s a lesson in using the best technology for the application, as ACMI’s project manager for the renewal work, Evan Davies, explains: “The Panasonic projection really serves the content well and allows us to be creative with the way we present that content. For example, there’s an artwork of four projections on screens, which is quite a large piece and beautifully shot. Technically, it looks relatively simple and it fills the space with movement and colour. I can assure you, it wasn’t technically simple. One of the projections involves a curved screen, but not uniformly curved — it turns a corner three quarters of the way down its length. It was a real head-scratcher. The space didn’t lend itself to using two projectors and edge blending. A brand new Panasonic lens came to the rescue. It’s called the 020 (ET-DLE020) ultra-short throw zoom lens. It’s gigantic and it sort of defies the laws of physics — none of us believed it would work. We examined the specs and we did all the mock-ups and we didn’t believe it till we saw it. The lens allows us to cover a huge area from a crazy-short distance, combine that with the internal geometry correction of the projector and we made it happen.”