Patent ID: 8894214

Claim:
An image projection apparatus comprising: a light source apparatus which emits illumination light; a digital micromirror device which modulates illumination light on an image display surface according to an image signal; a projection optical system which projects, while enlarging, an image with modulated light; and a corrector which, let a first wavelength and a second wavelength of wavelengths of light included in the illumination light be denoted by λ 1 and λ 2 , respectively, the first and second wavelengths λ 1 and λ 2 belonging to wavelength bands of colors different from each other, let a mirror surface forming each pixel on the image display surface be referred to as a pixel surface, let reflected light produced as a result of a light ray along an illumination optical axis being mirror-reflected on the pixel surface be referred to as mirror-reflected light, let, in a comparison in traveling direction between, of diffracted light produced as a result of light rays with the wavelengths λ 1 and λ 2 along the illumination optical axis being diffracted on the digital micromirror device in an on state, diffracted light with the wavelength λ 1 that travels in a direction closest to a traveling direction of the mirror-reflected light and diffracted light with the wavelength λ 2 that travels in a direction closest to the traveling direction of the mirror-reflected light, the diffracted light with the wavelength λ 1 be diffracted to a position farther away from the mirror-reflected light than the diffracted light with the wavelength λ 2 , corrects angle distribution of the illumination light such that the angle distribution of the illumination light includes at least an angle distribution that fulfills conditional formula (1) below: Fλ2<Fλ1 (1) where Fλ 1 represents an F-number of illumination light with the first wavelength λ 1 ; and Fλ 2 represents an F-number of illumination light with the second wavelength λ 2 .