Road Tests

In late 2012, Elation Lighting introduced a new fixture in their LED product line, the Rayzor Q7. It is a wash/beam moving head that produces a 7° beam angle.

The “LT” in Philips Vari-Lite’s new VL3015LT Spot stands for “long throw,” and one of the first things you will notice about this fixture is brightness, along with a zoom range tailor made for long throw applications. With an improved output running at 1650 watts using a 1500W Osram double-ended short arc lamp, the VL3015LT Spot combines some of Vari-Lite’s latest technologies with features that designers have been relying on for years with fixtures like the VL3000 and VL3500 spots.

I’ve been on a switcher binge as of late. Multi-format switchers, that is. Besides an output source, the absolute heart of any rig is the switcher. In the production world, there has been an arms race of sorts, the race to cram more into less. The 1RU form factor is the de facto size, and there are only a few issues we need to overcome in order to make this the sweet spot for switching.

Tungsten halogen lamps have been used in the theatrical, TV and film lighting industries for more to 50 years, and to some, they still remain the preferred lamp source. With the much-discussed LED revolution, advances in technologies have led to lighting alternatives that are just as bright but lower in wattage and energy consumption and cool and quiet in operation. And while there have been downsides, including a much-higher upfront cost, the benefits have been compelling enough to create a strong shift in demand toward LEDs. These include the costs associated with lamp replacement (including labor) and HVAC cooling along with more expensive power bills.

Moving Light Assistant is a new software title for the entertainment lighting industry. Many of us have either grown up on John McKernon’s Lightwright software or have gone “home brew” by creating our own paperwork in Excel. Moving Light Assistant fills a new segment in tracking data between the designer, the console and multi-attributed devices.
Keeping tabs on a moving light is a bit more challenging than a standard dimming circuit. Rather than just one attribute to track, each moving light has at least two, and usually multiple, attributes, and it can be mind boggling to keep track of all the individual fixture variables across an expansive lighting rig.

Over the last year I have seen numerous LED products flood our industry. Each one seems to be a slightly different version of a similar light fixture. Then I took the eye Kandy from elektraLite for a test drive and was immediately impressed by the fact that I was witnessing something revolutionary. Someone had built a normal moving light, but instead of the usual lamp for a light source, the light beam comes from one bright 200 watt white LED.

The Ai Media Server family, developed through Avolites Media’s alliance with Immersive Ltd., bridges the gap between media server and video pre-viz tool in a new and powerful way. Unlike other DMX-based media servers, Ai can operate as a stand-alone server that performs a wide range of media-related tasks, including content generation, playback of multiple layers of HD content, 3D mapping and pre-visualization of the entire performance area, all on the same machine.

PRG’s Best Boy 4000 is an all-in-one lighting tool. It combines high output, an 8:1 zoom range, razor sharp optics, framing shutters, exciting special effects and state of the art technology into one versatile package. Let’s take a closer look.

For the last year, I have been waiting for a manufacturer of LED heads to make a certain fixture — one that allows me to decide which of the 19 individual LEDs in the face will illuminate and which I can keep dark, without having to use hundreds of DMX channels per fixture. GLP (German Light Products) has figured it out. The same people that led the LED-based moving head revolution have upped the ante with the release of the Impression X4.