Road Tests

ADJ has been stepping up their game in the professional grade segment of their business with the introduction of the 3 Sixty 2R split head moving light.  The company’s goal: to offer a wide range of products for every segment of the market from entry level to professional and installation markets. The 3 Sixty 2R, first featured at LDI 2013, is aimed at lighting pros aiming for both affordability and an array of amazing looks.

In recent years, automated lighting fixtures utilizing LED technology have begun to evolve beyond wash fixtures into more dynamic visual effects. As many manufacturers continue to strive toward creating brighter and brighter LED profile fixtures, LED wash fixtures have tended to be pretty much the same. That is, until the Shapeshifter. I recently traveled to Austin, TX to spend some time with engineering innovator and Shapeshifter creator Richard Belliveau of High End Systems to learn more about this promising new fixture.

When I first looked at the various items in the package from RC4 Wireless, I was unsure how groundbreaking this system would be beyond providing miniscule applications of wireless data and dimming. However, within minutes of watching the start-up tutorial videos, I realized that this product would be much more than that. The modern RC4 system is a highly configurable, multi-functional, powerful set of tools that electricians, scenic/lighting/props designers, and multimedia artists should definitely take note.

What  options do you have when managing the playback of content in multiple locations from a single source? Until recently, the answer would have been to create a matrix of routers, cables, media servers, and controllers to accomplish what should be fairly straightforward. Patch Player, by ExtraPro LLC, is a new content playback application that lets users control content playing in various locations from a single source.  Created by developer/owner Ted Mizrahi, Patch Player promises to simplify control and setup for presentations, tradeshows and other types of multi-show environments via any Android OS device.

A wasp, hornet, yellow jacket, or honeybee? Which of these have anything to do with a moving light? All the buzz is because Clay Paky, Italian based lighting manufacturer and maker of the popular Sharpy, has taken the beautiful naturally occurring honeycomb pattern and applied it as a front lens to its latest wash light, the A.leda B-Eye K20.

I have to start out by saying what a pleasure it is to toy around with a new original light fixture. One that does not copy or emulate any other lighting fixture on the market, but is unique. French lighting manufacturer Ayrton has once again raised the bar with the release of their MagicBlade. I am sitting in the Morpheus Lights showroom in Las Vegas as I run this beauty through its paces. Morpheus Lights distributes Ayrton in America. 

Have you ever been so excited about a lighting fixture that you cannot stop playing with it? I’ll be honest here, that is almost always the case when a new light hits my doorstep.  It is kind of like Christmas every time.  Though, this time, I had to travel across the Atlantic with this particular light. I picked it directly from the factory, hot off the production line.

LED ellipsoidal fixtures are the hottest and most debated product type on the market right now. But can you really call them ellipsoidal? Since LED profile fixtures don’t have an ellipsoidal reflector, the name doesn’t seem a perfect fit. They do have the same characteristics that we know and love from our old reliable tungsten-based fixtures, however. Maybe they should be called Lekos? That is just another angle of the debate going forward with these types of fixtures.

You probably read the title of this piece and then the byline, and asked yourself, “Why would a lighting guy be reviewing a video product?” I might start off by noting that it’s really okay for people to venture into unfamiliar terrain and learn something new. I could strengthen that further by saying lighting guys really should learn more about video, since our consoles are being used, more and more, for video cues. So if you’re also a lighting professional looking to learn more about new video technologies, join me as my venture into the world of video production continues.

When you design a rig, you typically use fixtures for a given look that you are trying to achieve. Say you trying to wash a stage in a color, or you are looking for something that can project gobos. You choose a fixture based on its abilities. There is a give and take sometimes with a choice of fixtures. You might want the color mixing abilities, but the shuttering of a profile is something you can live with out.

A new safety device has been introduced to our business from Scotland recently, and has been making waves on this side of the Atlantic as well. The Uplift Fall Protection System establishes a new, intelligent way technicians as well as other people in the entertainment field will work on gear hanging in the air. Designed by Limpet Technology out of Edinburgh, this unique device leads us into a new age of safety when it comes to technicians, actors and anyone whose feet leave the ground in their work environment. Upstaging Lighting, a leading innovator in touring lighting systems, is proud to be the first American company to buy and utilize the Uplift Fall Prevention System (UFPS).