Canon Realis SX7 Lens Throw and Lens Shift
Canon provides an zoom lens with plenty of flexibility. It's 1.7:1 zoom ratio is far more than the typical 1.2:1 found on many portables, and very few offer as much or more range than the SX7. To fill a 100" 4:3 aspect ratio screen, the front of the SX7 can be as close as 9 feet 5 inches and as far back as 16 feet 3 inches.
The Canon SX7 offers no lens shift, but does, of course, have keystone correction.
Canon Realis SX7 - SDE and Rainbow Effect
The SX7 is 100% free and clear in both categories. Since it is an LCoS design, with three panels (one each for red, green, and blue), there is no spinning color wheel, thus no possibility of the Rainbow Effect. LCoS, by its nature, has the least visible pixel structure (by far) of the three projector technologies - LCoS, 3LCD, and DLP. Combine that with the Canon's ultra high resolution, and pixels are completely invisible unless you are just a couple of feet from a fairly large screen.
Canon Realis SX7 Audible Noise Levels
Pretty good for a portable. The Canon claims 31 db, in its eco-mode (lamp on low power). If anything, it may be even be slightly better than that. They don't rate the noise in full power, but I'd put it around 35 db. The last review was the Dell M209X, which claimed 39 db in full power, and I can definitely tell you that the Canon is immediately, noticeably quieter.
Canon Realis SX7 - Projector Brightness
Ahh! A really bright portable projector. I even had the opportunity to use it at a family event. The projector effortlessly cut through the moderately bright lighting in a large diningroom for about 125 people, to show a video on an 80" diagonal screen. This was the same lighting used for the entire event, not dimmed at all for the projector. The SX7 was hardly challenged.
Here's how the SX7 measured out. Canon claims 4000 lumens.
Presentation mode is definitely the brightest mode. The Canon, with the zoom lens near the middle of the range, measured 4650 lumens. That means its even brighter with the zoom at full wide angle, and perhaps 20% less in full telephoto.
Standard mode wasn't quite as bright, but was a little more natural looking. It still managed an impressive 3836 lumens.
I should mention, that Standard mode dropped almost 23% when switched to Eco-mode, yielding 2961 lumens. You can figure that the same 23% drop will apply to Eco-mode compared to lamp on bright, for all modes (such as Standard and Presentation).
MoviePhoto mode automatically drops the fan and lamp into Eco-mode for the lower sound levels. You can, however use the menu to switch it back to full power. At full power, it measured 1725 lumens, still brighter than almost any home theater projector.
Last is sRGB, which measured with lamp on full power, at 3874 lumens.
Bottom line: The SX7 will blast its way through presentations in conference rooms and training rooms on screens of 100" diagonal or less. With over 4000 lumens, though, its strength is the ability to tackle larger screens and perform beautifully with moderate lighting control. A great, bright portable.
Canon Realis SX7 Lamp Life and Replacement
The lamp life is pretty standard. Canon claims the usual 2000 hours with lamp on full power, and 3000 hours in Eco-mode.
On using the Realis SX7 for Home Theater and Photography
I already mentioned (bottom of the Image Quality page) the nasty motion artifact I saw when when there were action packed scenes, demanding heavy image processing. This really ruins the projector's capabilities as a seriously bright home theater projector. Otherwise, it has a lot going for it.
Projected still photography looked great, good but not exceptional contrast, but bright, and natural colors after a basic calibration
I have just advised Canon regarding the video image processing issue, and will discuss with them. It may be this unit, although I doubt it. However, it is possible that it may not suffer this problem, with component video input instead of HDMI, or doing 1080/60 instead of 1080/24. There was no problem with lower resolution video sources.
If we find that there is a good workaround, or that this unit is the problem, this will get updated.
