D5100 pictures of a projector screen

Lawgirl316

New member
Hi all! This is my first post here. I have a D5100. For the past couple months when I take a picture of a portable projector screen with a PowerPoint presentation on it my image has crazy images. Usually, the colors in the image are rainbow and blue/green, but the projected image looks nothing like this. I probably bumped something in my settings but for the life of me can't figure it out! It's super frustrating because all my other pics are perfect except the ones of that darn screen!

I have been able to take pictures of this screen in the past with no problems - so I'm sure I did something with the settings accidentally.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Lori
 

nickt

Senior Member
What's your shutter speed? Try a as low as possible but fast enough to not get shake if you are hand holding. I don't know anything about the projector, but there is a huge potential for craziness to happen if your shutter speed is too fast. It's sort of like an old tube tv screen which were near impossible to photograph. On the old tv's the image is 'painted' line by line very quickly and our eye just soaks the whole thing it, but a fast shutter speed catches an instantaneous look at the incompletely 'painted' picture. More likely is that your modern device uses pulsed LED's. Similar principal, but higher speed than an old tv. Its probably flashing the red, blue, green consecutively at a very rapid rate painting the picture. Your fast shutter speed catches a random instant of this digital painting. Using a slower shutter speed your camera will catch the whole scene as your eyes see it. It has to stay open long enough for the screen to go through a complete cycle. No idea what that speed would be, but if you should be able to quickly find it. Use shutter priority and start somewhere around 1/focal length.
 

WayneF

Senior Member
Welcome to the forum Lori. The only problem description is "crazy" and "not rainbow or blue/green". Some description of what the problem in fact is could only help. :) What do you see?

If the problem is "color" (esp orange color), check camera white balance. If it is a slide projector and if pictures of this screen used to work, check the Exif in pictures that did work for the White Balance used then.

I'd guess camera White Balance needs to be Incandescent for the projector lamp. If the camera WB is Daylight, we would expect orange pictures of Incandescent.

If the camera mode is Auto, then White Balance is Auto WB, sometimes good, sometimes not.

For reference, an ELH lamp for Kodak Carousel projector is 3350K. Nikon Incandescent WB is 3000K, and Daylight is 5200K.

If it is not a slide projector.... if you are instead projecting a image from an image file on a computer, then don't do that... You don't need the camera for that... just use a copy of the original image file directly.
 
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