Blizzard Lighting is based in Waukesha, WI. I’m not sure where that is either, but it turns out it’s about 30 minutes west of Milwaukee. Blizzard Lighting is a newer company to the industry, but not as new as you may think. They have been manufacturing lights since March of 2010. In fact, their first LED moving light was called “Flurry Wash,” which certainly aligns with their theme of “cool” and “wintry.”
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PR Lighting is the market leader in entertainment lighting in China. They have been around since 1984, and their professionally designed, quality gear is among some of the best fixtures in the world. They have been working on their XLED series of fixtures suited for the entertainment market for a few years and recently released their top-of-the-line wash light — the XLED 4022RZ. While this is the 12th fixture to be included in this series, it offers more punch and effects than the other LED pancake style models previously released.
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For a few years, it wasn’t clear how soon we’d have LED engines capable of providing the raw output necessary to compete with high-wattage arc sources — those tiny bits of bottled lightning held their position as the brightest practical form of entertainment lighting we had for many, many years. As advancement in semiconductor science marched on, however, the first truly usable hard-edged LED fixtures appeared and have been steadily improving.
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DTS is an Italian company that designs, engineers, manufactures and distributes lighting products and lighting effects for entertainment and architectural uses. This month, they sent me a light that is perfect for any architectural application, but also can be used in any theater, concert or live event as a wonderful source for splashing color.
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Chauvet Professional is a top name in entertainment lighting, and the company continues to deliver new and innovative products to the market. Joining the existing Maverick series of spots, washes, and a beam is the brightest of the washes, the Maverick MK3 Wash. In this Road Test, we’ll travel in and around the full-featured MK3 Wash moving head fixture to learn all about it.
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One tool that has never found its way into my workbox is a DMX tester. Over the years, I’ve tried a few in shops and at trade shows, and I never found one that quite fit into my workflow. In general, I’ve found that some of the popular models are either too fiddly to use, have poor visibility in low-light environments like a stage, and I even used one that required the user to memorize a series of colored lights and blinking patterns to figure out what was going on.
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Elation has released the first member of its Artiste line, their new series of white LED engine sourced fixtures. The DaVinci is a medium-sized spot fixture that packs quite a punch and comes with more functions than any fixture this size should be allowed. In other words, it’s pretty much covering every function a hard-edge fixture should, from an animation wheel to color mixing to frost filters. They didn’t skimp on anything. The big question is — how did they pack all of this in such a condensed and lightweight package?
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It is true, though not necessarily original, to observe that the marketplace for multifunction luminaires has been particularly busy for the past few years. The promise of multiple features on a compact and low-wattage platform is an appealing one, and the makers of these light try their hardest to get the highest-quality effects into moving heads with very little space and demanding cooling requirements. Today, we’re examining the GT-1 hybrid fixture from German Light Products, a (not unsurprisingly) Karlsbad, Germany-based company that has been making intelligent lighting since 1994.
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Robe is a top name in entertainment lighting and they continue to deliver new and innovative products to the market. Robe has their successful line of LEDWash and LEDBeam fixtures. In 2016, they released their first “LED WashBeam,” called the Spikie (See Road Test, PLSN, Nov. 2017, page 72). After its immediate success, Robe began developing a second LED WashBeam fixture, the Spiider. Let’s explore this fixture to learn why it’s different from the competition.
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Cameras are like drugs for me. I liken getting into cameras kind of like getting into skiing. You start out with a cruddy rental of some ho-hum gear, slide down and get the general hang of it, and then you need to upgrade. And it’s not cheap. Because that thrill — that thrill costs money. I bought my first decent camera because I was tired of taking awful pictures. Now I need to rein myself in every time I go near a camera store. It’s almost worse in my professional life due to the fact that cheap gear ain’t pro, and pro gear ain’t cheap.
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Some fixtures do their best to defy categorization. In recent years, we’ve seen manufacturers release lights that attempt to fit characteristics of several types fixtures into a single unit, generally combining key aspects into a fixture released under the banner of “hybrid.” Today we look at an Ayrton fixture that combines elements of high-resolution video panels and narrow-beam LED matrices into a single fixture.
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Beam fixtures have certainly become commonplace in the world, but when one thinks of these we normally think of the small fixtures with a tiny aperture that project pencil-thin beams. That was then and quite frankly, this is now. The VL6000 Beam takes everyone’s preconceived notion of what a beam fixture should be able to do and has doubled down on it. This unique fixture is like no other, changes color like no other, emits lumens equivalent to a long throw spotlight and is the fastest large-yoke fixture I have ever seen. And it’s virtually silent.
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