Opti Solar 250 opinions

The opti solar 250 is an amazing piece of kit but cannot hold itself against a modern lighting rig, colourtemperature as well as output are quite a bit lower. I have an 150w hti equivalent a d even that is too dim. Lots of lumens are lost on the effect wheel and 50-year old optic path. 575hmi versions are laaaaaarge. Look up marco broeders/co2ro on facebook, he uses loads of opti kit in real life situations.

There is a 575 available on a fb group I'm on. He wants £1000.

Yep, I have a few of the Sanyo XP / Eiki LC projectors and they still hold their own. Quite a few lens options which can be found for good money if you're patient. Coupled with an old laptop and a few long VGA cables and away you go...

oh and while we're at it... don't forget the original method of an Over Head Projector (OHP), a fish tank full of water, some coloured oils and someone on fist full of microdots happily playing with it all night long....

AM55 wrote: [QUOTE=Digbethdave]There is a 575 available on a fb group I'm on. He wants £1000.

DigbethDave wrote: I should imagine he will have told hold out a while for that, seems expensive for such an old, niche fixture no?

They are a tradable commodity still. Not much else does what they do, and they are in short supply. Most quantities held by a few people who specialise in that sort of thing.

One thing that I would say about the 250's is they are massively improved by use of alternative lenses to the stock Opti ones. So look at Kodak, Docter, etc. I have some Docter zoom lenses and the light output difference is incredible.

One thing in the favour of the Opti stuff is it's a self contained unit, you can throw them up somewhere with just some power and let them do their analogue thing.
Video projectors are good (I've just bought some - Epson 6k's) but need a bit more infrastructure to do their thing (including content distribution systems like Datapath).
I'm currently trying to find money for new cable stocks, particularly where you might need long cable runs, so you're into HDBaseT or SDI, so adaptors for older projectors too. Its another expense rabbit hole.

Simple things like lenses are a good example. I can get a long throw zoom lens for an Opti for £40-80.
An equivalent lens for one of my projectors is at least £800.
And the Opti doesn't suffer the contrast issues of a video projector (assuming you aren't with deep pockets for laser based projectors)
Try taking a dark room and putting up a single 250.
Then do the same with a video projector and see if the grey rectangle is acceptable.