Patent ID: 8714753

Claim:
A projector comprising: a light source device; an optical modulation device configured to modulate a luminous flux emitted from the light source device in accordance with image information, forming an image; a projection optical device configured to project the image; a shutter device including a light shielding plate which can move into and out of an optical path of the luminous flux ranging from the light source device to the optical modulation device, and shields the luminous flux by the light shielding plate moving into the optical path; a light control device that is disposed on the optical path's upstream side of the shutter device, and changes the area of a light passage through which the luminous flux passes to control the quantity of the luminous flux; and a control unit that controls the shutter device and light control device, wherein the shutter device and the light control device are disposed on the optical path upstream of the optical modulation device, and the control unit controls the light control device in accordance with the movement of the light shielding plate of the shutter device such that when the light shielding plate is entirely shielding the luminous flux, the control unit moves the light control device to shield some but not all of the quantity of luminous flux, and when the control unit determines that the image formed by the optical modulation device is bright as a whole, the control unit moves the light control device to increase the quantity of luminous flux.