Patent ID: 8398248

Claim:
A projector comprising: an illuminating device including at least a light source device that emits light, a first lens array having plural first small lenses for dividing the light emitted from the light source device into plural partial light beams, the first lens array comprising first regions located at four corners in the first lens array when viewed along a system optical axis and second regions located between the two first regions adjacent to each other along a direction parallel to a first side in the first lens array among the first regions, and a second lens array having plural second small lenses corresponding to the plural first small lenses; a light modulating device that modulates illumination light from the illuminating device according to image information; a projection optical system that projects modulated light from the light modulating device as a projection image; a light control device that is disposed in an optical path between the first lens array and the second lens array and increases or reduces a light amount of light irradiated on the light modulating device by blocking a light blocking amount corresponding to the image information in the light amount of the plural partial light beams, the light control device including first light shields for blocking partial light beams emitted from the first regions of the first lens array and second light shields for blocking partial light beams emitted from the second regions of the first lens array; and a mode selection device that selects between a brightness priority mode and a contrast priority mode as the operation mode of the light control device, when the brightness priority mode is selected, the light control device blocking part of the plural partial light beams by causing the first light shields and the second light shields to integrally operate, when the contrast priority mode is selected, the light control device always blocking part of the partial light beams emitted from the first regions with the first light shields and blocking the partial light beams emitted from the second regions by causing the second light shields to operate independently from the first light shields.