For those of you who haven't heard, the DIY Projector Company has got a great new fresnel lens large enough for even a widescreen 17" LCD panel! How big is that, you may ask? At a whopping 15.5"x15.5", this is the absolute largest fresnel lens you can get for under $100. We've been talking about it for a while, but haven't had any pictures to help visualize how large the new lenses are ... until now!

The right-most lens is our trusty, high-quality F12SPLIT fresnel lens, which measures 12.2"x12.2", and is great for most panels under 15" diagonally. The larger lens is the new 15.5"x15.5" F15SPLIT fresnel lens, large enough to handle a 17" LCD panel! And since a larger lens is capable of collecting more light, you can just imagine how much brighter you build a projector using the newer, larger lens!

If you are interested (and I know that I am), then keep reading. The following is our original ad for the new lens:

Lens Features & Specifications
The major benefit of our new fresnel lenses are increased size. With a whopping 15.5x15.5 footprint, these lenses are big enough to fully cover your 15" LCD panel, and even as large as a 17" panel in 4:3 or 16:9 widescreen modes! You'll never again need a replacement fresnel lens because these are the best you can buy in this price range.

You have two basic choices when purchasing our new fresnel lens. The F15SPLIT fresnel lens has a focal length of 13" for either half of the lens, and is good for practically any LCD panel or projector design. If you want to shrink the size your projector has to be as well as to greatly increase brightness, then the DFLF15SPLIT lens is perfect for you. It maintains compatibility with most projection lenses (even OHP lenses) by using a 13" focal length on it's upper half. The lower half, however, has a reduced 8.67" focal length. This means that you can place this lens much closer to your light source, for a typical increase in brightness of about 2x!

Either lens is a terrific buy, especially for the price offered. The lenses do still have a small bit cut from each corner, but you have a minimum effective lens area of 15x15", which is still plenty big for any LCD panel up to 17" diagonally! Our lenses are custom made from high quality optical acrylic, not PVC, to give the best output possible. Both lenses are available in our online store, where you may also find some additional specifications and other information.

 Why We Are Doing This
Over the past year, seemingly hundreds of people have asked me about fresnel lenses that would cover their entire 15" LCD panel. Until now, the largest commonly available fresnel lenses would work with a 15" LCD panel, but in some cases you would lose a small part of the corners of your image. We thought that it would be a good idea to manufacture lenses that would surely work with 15" lenses, but then realized that there are also other people who want to try using 17" LCD panels also, so voila - a top quality fresnel lens that is compatible with up to 17" LCD panels!

© 2006 DIY For Life Inc