Re-Post: 4Wall Lighting Lounge – Three Fixtures I’m Dying to Use In 2016

Have you heard of the Lighting Lounge over on UsedLighting.com?  4Wall Lighting started a blog a while ago that focuses on different aspects of the industry along with some industry news.  They recently asked me to write a blog post about three fixtures I am looking forward to using in 2016.  Here are some excerpts from the original post which you can find here.

Aryton MagicDot-R

Ayrton Lighting has made a huge impact in the entertainment lighting industry.  The company has been around for years. It was just four short years ago that Ayrton made a re-insurgence into the industry with the introduction of the MagicPanel 602, a moving head fixture with 36 individually controllable 15 watt RGBW LED array. The 6 x 6 LED may be impressive, but the continuous and unlimited pan and tilt of the fixture is what made the industry take note.

Robe Lighting VIVA

In the past couple of years Robe Lighting has stepped up their R&D in LEDs and has released some fairly impressive LED based moving heads.  The latest LED based moving head from the Czech company is the VIVA.  It’s a lightweight moving head that uses a 270W white light LED engine.

ETC Source 4WRD

In mid-January, ETC released yet another bombshell on the industry with the introduction of their latest LED product, the Source 4WRD.  Professionals at every level of the business took notice of ETC’s latest offering as it has a large impact on a segment of the market that wants LEDs but maybe cannot afford new technologies.

To read the entire post and my thoughts about these new products and why I look forward to using them, visit the UsedLighting.com Lighting Lounge.  Share your thoughts on these three new devices as well as new products that you are looking forward to using.

Robe Lighting Launches The BMFL WashBeam

Robe Lighting is at it again. Today they have officially launched their latest fixture in the BMFL range, the BMFL WashBeam. Robe once again used the power of the internet to reach a global audience to introduce the BMFL WashBeam.

The BMFL WashBeam joins the BMFL Spot, BMFL Blade and BMFL Wash with a 1700W compact short-arc metal halide source and an impressive 90+ CRI rating.

More From Robe Lighting

An online launch platform was chosen to reach a global audience of busy industry professionals … empowering them to participate in the experience and excitement via computers and smart-devices wherever they are and whatever they are doing.

Robe’s worldwide distribution network can be contacted to arrange full physical demonstrations of the BMFL WashBeam, and the fixture will be showcased at the upcoming Prolight+Sound expo in Frankfurt in April and future trade shows and exhibitions.

Delivering an incredible 300,000 Lux at 5 metres – BMFL WashBeam is the brightest BMFL range fixture to date.

The BMFL WashBeam joins the BMFL Spot and BMFL Blade and BMFL Wash, ensuring that Robe offers the most comprehensive range of high powered, fully optimised 1700W hybrid moving light fixtures on the market.

It features all the innovation that has made the BMFL a massive success on numerous world class shows, events and installations.

Robe has engineered all the vital power, finesse and reliability that is characteristic of the game-changing BMFL range into a new truly multi-purpose fixture which complements the ‘BMFL family’.

The brand has enjoyed unprecedented success with its BMFL Spot, Blade and Wash fixtures designed for all types of live applications and installed environments.

The Robe philosophy of producing ‘smaller-lighter-brighter’ has also been continued with this signature range, and even with the incredible brightness … BMFL has been kept compact and streamlined.

BMFL Spots, Blades and Washes have been used worldwide on some amazing shows and events since September 2014, including the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games Opening & Closing Ceremonies; The 2015 SEA Games Opening & Closing Ceremonies in Singapore; NBC’s Sunday Night Football Open sequence with Carrie Underwood; leading TV productions across Europe and Asia; at the world’s favourite music festivals like Tomorrowland in Belgium and Glastonbury in the UK; for lighting numerous internationally acclaimed artists from David Guetta to AC/DC to The Grateful Dead; together with other high profile events like New Zealand Fashion Week and prestigious installations like London’s Royal Albert Hall.

All of these and many, many more are enjoying the benefits, brightness and huge flexibility of the BMFL range

The BMFL WashBeam underlines Robe’s commitment to producing the very best of entertainment lighting technology and offering the most creative, reliable and practical tools for lighting, show and visual designers, rental companies, venues and other end-users.

BMFL WashBeam Stats

• Customized super-bright 1700W compact short-arc metal halide lightsource with 6,000K color temperature
• 300,000 Lux at 5 meters – the brightest BMFL series fixture to date
• High CRI of more than 90
• Sumptuous ‘fat-beam’ emitted via 180 mm front lens
• Wash, Spot, Profile & Beam
• 5 – 45 degree zoom
• Super-smooth color mixing
• Refined dimming curve
• 2 x color wheels
• Two gobo wheels (rotating & static) with premium quality HD glass gobos
• Animation wheel
• Four fast framing shutters to create individually angled positions within the framing module which rotates 90 degrees – for quick sharp / soft focus, and the creation of complex in-air effects or crisp projected animations.
• Three grades of frost filter for additional smoothing of the beam edge
• Electronic Motion Stabilizer (EMS) technology to absorb vibrations from music and audio sources, truss movement, sprung or suspended floors, etc.
• Weight: 83 pounds (38 Kg)
• Compact dimensions

Learn more about the Robe Lighting BMFL WashBeam

New Product: ilumo Range LED Fixtures From Lumonic

Lumoonic launched a new range of LED lighting fixtures at the PLASA Show, the ilumo range. The product line consist of the ilumo Modular Zoom LED Spot, ilumo Zoom LED Spot, ilumo LED Spot and the ilumo Portable LED Spot.

The company to develop a modular ‘Par’ fixture with high efficiency, full color LED mixing, remote motorized ZOOM and packed with the following market leading functionality and control. Some of the other features include Remote motorized zoom, detachable LED head, color graphic LCD, custom LED head, color calibrated LEDs, intelligent LED PCB, ethernet enabled, RDM enabled, IR remote enabled head, anti-flicker PWM control, enclosed Wi-Fi aerial, IP rated, optional wireless DMX, thermally efficient design.

The management team leading Lumonic includes Dr James A Powell whose reputation in LED Applied Technology is recognized throughout the industry. James’s technology created some of the most innovative lighting products to hit the LED Entertainment market in recent years. It was his electronics, software and LED technology that was behind both the iconic ‘1044’ and Par 90 products.

More recently James’s electronics technology has been behind the LED lighting used for U2’s 360° Tour and Celine Dion in Las Vegas. You can learn more about the ilumo range of products by visiting their website, www.lumonic.com.

ETC CUE: Day 1 Keynote

7/26/2011…Today’s morning kicked off bright and early at 8 am with a fabulous address by Fred Foster.  The audience was held in rapt attention for an hour and a half listening to his stories about the history of ETC and just how much the company is for the people.   (Sadly my audio recording froze up and I lost the whole thing…)

However to end the address and kick off the morning sessions, there was a short colorful visual demo:

Yep; by now you’ve probably heard through the social grapevine that it is indeed truly coming…an LED Source Four.  There is it’s result right there: clean projection, 7-color plus the daylight (perhaps more?  I lost count when the gasps enveloped the room) flashed before our eyes on the screen, then this display of the Kick-Ass Daylight White.  It definitely is.  Look for more information in the coming 9-12 months.

 

DeSisti Introduces 90w & 120w LED-onardo and 40W LED Magis Fixtures

At the NAB Show in Vegss this year, DeSisti introduced their three newest products, the LED Leonardo 40W, 90w and the 120W Fresnel fixtures. DeSisti is stating that the fixtures are equivalent to a 500W, 650W and 1200W tungsten fixtures out put, respectively.

LED retrofit kits are also available for the Tungsten Leonardo 1kW and 2kW Fresnels to convert to 90W and 120W high efficiency LED systems. The above products are available with a Color Temperature of either 3200K or 5600K, in all the versions the lighting intensity can be controlled via a built-in DMX card. The fixtures have the ultimate control with spot to flood focus and excellent barn door cutting. Optically the LED fresnels are equivalent in performance to a tungsten fresnel.

The new LED Fresnel fixtures are expected to hit the market some time this summer.  Pricing has yet to be released.

Times Square Lighting Introduces New LED Fixtures

Times Square Lighting has been hard at work this winter designing and producing a number of new Theatrical LED Par fixtures. The new line primarily features RGB and RGBW borderlights and PAR cans suitable for use in clubs, tours, and exhibits. Most products are fully DMX-controllable and also include built-in programs for stand-alone usage. Of course, master/slave and audio-activated modes are also supported.

Head over to Times Square website at www.tslight.com to learn about all of the new theatrical LED fixtures.

Coemar Introduces New LED Profile Fixturea – Reflection LEDko

Last week at Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt Germany, Coemar added three new LED fixtures to their Reflection lineup of fixtures.  All of the three new fixtures fall into under the name LEDko.  Nice use of word play if you ask me, mixing leko and LED.

The three new fixtures are the Reflection Ledko FullSpectrum, Reflection Ledko VariWhite and the Reflection Ledko White. Each of the fixture include “multi-LED” light source at 120w for producing uniform beams of light with no pixels or dots, patent pending.The life span of the LED’s are expected to last 50,000 hours at 70% lumen intensity maintenance.

To learn more about the different versions of the Coemar Reflection Ledko, visit their website at www.coemar.com.

Barbizon Lighting Debuts the World’s Brightest Broadcast/Film LED Fixture

Barbizon Lighting today revealed the intent to develop, manufacture, and distribute a new line of LED based
lighting fixtures called the Eta Carina line for the film video market segment. Barbizon’s plan is to reveal the fixture at this year’s NAB show April 11-14. Quietly over the last year Barbizon Lighting has recruited a team to build, hands-down, the most efficient, brightest flexible LED luminaire for use in film and video production.

The team includes:

• Nano-technologists with deep understanding of solid-state lighting who are using nano structures to create white light LED arrays with a CRI of 95+.
• Optical engineers who have developed high gain lenses utilizing Wavefront-guided LASIK technology to multiply the focusing power of the LED’s lensing system, by optimizing lenses with a spatially varying correction, guiding the computer-controlled excimer laser with measurements from a wavefront sensor. Based on their results, the team has successfully used WFG-Lasik to amplify the LED output exponentially.
• A thermal dissipation team who’s sole goal was to keep the system cool and without divulging too much of the patent-pending system, have miniaturized a cooling technology originally developed by Cray Computers that uses a ‘plasma’ to cool components. The new system uses Moore’s Law and nano-tubes specifically knit to dissipate heat from the circuit.
• Lastly an industrial design group with talent culled from industrial packaging to the auto and aerospace industry to develop a housing that can be used indoors or out that is easy to set-up and focus.

“We took almost a year to get it just right and ready for the industry. It’s also been so hard to not tell anyone what we’ve been up to.” says Tobin Neis, Marketing director for Barbizon. “The reigning “brightest star” in our galaxy is the Eta Carina, with a whopping solar wattage of 4.7 million suns. This is how our new fixture stacks up to the next closest competitor.”

Barbizon’s President Jonathan Resnick told us, “Look, we used our market position and customer base in television and film to determine where the white space was for this fixture. We also could see first hand where our now competitors fall short and where we could improve on their mistakes. There’s no doubt about it, this fixture is going to change this industry – everyone else will now be in our shadow.”

Happy April Fool’s Day

Light Painting With Clay Paky at ACT Lighting

I was recently invited to the ACT Lighting office in New Jersey to take a look at the Clay Paky line up of Fixtures. ACT Lighting recently became a distributor of Clay Paky in the United States and wanted to show off the line up of fixtures. The gents at ACT Lighting setup one of each of the Clay Paky fixtures in their expanded warehouse. The fixtures were connected to a grandMA 2 Full Size with haze filling up the entire space. I joked with the guys at ACT that they should start a night club after hours. They had the fixtures, control and room, so why not? If a club can pop up in a meat packing plant like on Seinfeld, why not a shipping warehouse? We’ll see what happens. ;)

The first fixture we took a look at is the new Sharpy fixture. It was announced at PLASA 2010 in London England. The first thing you notice about the Sharpy is it’s size, it is small at just 17″h x 11″w and weighing in at 35 lbs. Inside, the Sharpy uses Philips new MSD Platinum 5R lamp at just 189 watts with a color temperature of 8000k and a life expectancy of 2000 hours. Remember that number, 189 watts. At first mention, you might think… um ok? After turning it on and striking the lamp, at 20 meters or 65 feet, the Sharpy is putting out 55,000 lux or just over 5,000 footcandles.

This is where I must warn you about jaw dropping. If you haven’t done so already, pick your jaw up off the table, it gets better. Combining the high quality, precision optics and the lamp output, Clay Paky has placed a warning on the outside of the Sharpy stating that the fixture should NEVER be pointed at a single point for too long at a distance of 40′ or less for risk of fire! The beam is that intense!

Keeping inside the fixture, the Sharpy has am interchangeable color wheel with 14 colors plus open, 17 fixed gobos, a 9-facet rotating prism, frost and a mechanical shutter. The Sharpy also has a zoom from zero to 3.8 degrees, and electronic focusing built in. Since the Sharpy does not offer a zoom function, Clay Paky included six different size apertures in the gobos to narrow the beam for awesome looking aerials. The colors on the color wheel are not your typical round diachronic, but flags that sit tightly next to each other. This gives the ability to have split colors in your beam.

What was really impressive… the speed of the fixture. The Sharpy is SUPER fast with it’s pan and tilt. It’s so fast it almost hurts to watch the fixture move. The fixture has the ability to complete it’s full 540 degree pan in just over 3 seconds and it complete tilt of 250 degrees in just under 2 seconds.

The Sharpy is a pretty impressive fixture for it’s size, output and speed. Read more about it on Clay Paky’s website, www.claypaky.it.

Another fixture we looked at was the new Alpha 700 Profile. The Alpha 700 Profile is jam packed with features! As with the entire line up of Clay Paky fixtures, I was impressed. The 700 is roughly the same size as your typical 700 watt moving head at 15″w x 15″ d x 25″ high weighing in at 69 lbs. As the saying goes, it’s whats on the inside that counts.

The Alpha 700 Profile uses the Philips MSR Gold 700/2 MiniFastFit lamp. Just like the 700’s brothers and sisters, Clay Paky uses high quality optics and lens to produce smooth and even beams. The fixture has and electronic linear zoom from 9 degrees to 55 degrees and electronic focusing.

Something I have to mention about the zoom and focus feature that will be coming into the Alpha 700 Profile is the “Stay-Sharp Zoom” auto focus feature. Just the like the 700 big brother, the 1500, the 700 will get the auto-focus feature. The auto-focus feature allows you to set the distance the fixture will be projecting on. After setting the distance, the fixture will “hold” focus while zooming in and out. The fixture does all the work determining how to keep focus will zooming! I can’t say it enough… very impressive!

This is where Clay Paky stepped it up another notch. They have a patent on a framing system that uses four blades that move separately with smooth and variable speed movement. The system allows for a “total curtain” effect to completely douse the output.

The 700 Profile features CMY color mixing in addition to an 8 color wheel and open. To top it off, the fixture also includes a linear CTO to match the fixture to tungsten sources. The 700 has 1 rotating gobo with 7 individual rotating/indexable gobos, 1 9-facet prism, 1 interchangeable frost filer, a high speed, 16 segmented mechanical iris and a hybrid 0-100% dimmer that is electronic and mechanical.

I could have sat at the desk all day playing with combination of color, gobos, focus and effects across all the fixtures. There is just so much packed into the Alpha 700 Profile that it seems like there are endless number of looks you can create with a single fixture. Some of the aerials that the fixture was able to produce were mind blowing and just pure lighting goodness. Check out more about the Clay Paky Alpha 700 Profile by visiting their website, www.claypaky.it.

While you are at it check out the entire line up of Clay Paky fixtures. While it wasn’t at the demo as it wasn’t ready yet, I am waiting patiently to see the new Shotlight Wash with 3000 watts of strobe… Yeah, 3000 WATTS OF STROBE! I don’t think this needs to be stated, but don’t look directly into the strobe.

I had a great time playing on the grandMA 2 and the Clay Paky fixtures ACT Lighting had out. If you have not had a chance to see the Clay Paky fixtures in person, do everything in your power to see them. The entire line up of fixtures has features that will be sure to knock your socks off, or at least give you goose bumps. Contact ACT Lighting to find out where they will be on display next or to line up a personal demo, you will not be disappointed.

I want to give a super huge thanks to the gents at ACT Lighting NJ for allowing me to “take over” their warehouse for a day to test out the fixtures and take some lighting porn photos. Next time, the Bar-b-que is on me!

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Times Square Lighting Launches BD202 & BD203 LED Fixtures

The BD202 and BD203 are theatrical-style units that deliver the lighting equivalence of a conventional 75-watt halogen MR16 lamp with a 70% power savings and up to ten times the lamp life. These fixtures feature the latest in LED technology utilizing warm, neutral and daylight white color temperatures with a 23º or 37º beam spread. The quality components used in the BD202 and BD203 are engineered to optimize light output and minimize lamp stress, resulting in reliability, color stability and lumen maintenance.

Features:

• Theatrical design
• Locking barndoors
• 120/277 Volt available
• 21 Watts
• 50,000 Hour lamp life
• Dimmable with external PWM dimmer
• 23 or 37 Degree beam
• No UV or IR
• CBCP equal to 75 watt MR16
• Numerous mounting options

Learn more about the Times Square Lighting BD202 and BD203 fixtures by visiting their website at www.tslight.com.

Scenex Lighting Announces LED Base4 Truss Toner Fixture

The LED Base4 from Scenex Lighting uses 12 x 3W tri-color RGB LED’s, with a 10° beam angle in a fixture which has been designed specifically to internally light truss pieces. Producing a bright, even beam of light that gives solid coverage, the Base4 offers a broad color palette from pastel to saturates, to work from.
With a square design, low profile and shaped corners, the LED Base 4 has been designed to fit inside standard 12 inch truss, locating easily and squarely every time it is rigged. The LED Base 4 features an auto ranging 90-240V power supply, and Neutrik Powercon input and output connectors for easy daisy chaining. With a maximum power consumption of 52W it means that a lot of Base4’s can be connected together on a single circuit. Weight and transportability have also been taken into account and with a light weight of just 5.5 lbs., the Base4 keeps weight loading on your truss low.

With practical insight, all of the connectors on the Base4 are side mounted allowing the fixture to be placed snugly into the end of your truss and still give easy access to the display driven setup menu and connection points. And for those times when the Base4 needs to be used in special locations, or on special events, the fixture also features a number of internal programs and the option to set a static scene on boot up. A square lens array to light a square object, innovative and effective.

More information about the LED Base4 from Scenex Lighting, visit www.germanlightproducts.com.

Review: BrickBlaster Pro RGBW LED Fixture

I mentioned the BrickBlaster Pro LED fixture a couple of weeks after LDI this past year in Vegas.  My late writing about the BrickBlaster Pro is a prime example of how large industry trade shows can be.  I totally missed seeing The Black Tank company on the show floor.  Lucky for me, a friend emailed me about the company and their brand new BrickBlaster Pro LED fixture.

The Black Tank company was kind enough to send me a demo kit of the brand new fixtures in order to provide you a review of the BrickBlaster RGBW LED fixture.  Lets start by taking a look at what the BrickBlaster is.  It is a small, I mean really small. It’s an LED fixture housed in a 4″ cube with Red, Green, Blue and White LEDs.  The Black Tank company is using 16 Luxam Rebel, 3 watt LEDs to produce 1200 lumens of max output with all the colors. That would be four LEDs per color. Each LED has a life expectancy of 50,000 hours. Pretty impressive for the size, number of LEDs and the output.

In addition to the RGBW BrickBlaster, The Black Tank company also produces a Variable Color Temperature BrickBlaster that can produce a white light from 2700 kelvin to 6500 kelvin.  Although the Variable Color Temperature, (VCT) fixture wasn’t available for my review, It would be safe to say that the VCT fixture has to have a higher output of lumens compared to the RGBW fixture.  Information on those numbers haven’t been made available yet, but should be ready soon.

Lens System

Taking a closer look at the RGBW version of the BrickBlaster Pro, there is a lot happening in this small cube. First has to be the lens system.  Like many LED manufacturers out there, to offer different beam spread with the fixture, there are lens over lays to widened and narrow the beam. The BrickBlaster Pro uses this same sort system and offers a 20, 40 and 60 degree lens option. What is unique about the lens system is how they attach.  Rather than a slide clip, the lens have four holes in the corners that line up with the thumb screws on the fixture which will certainly keep the lens in place.  A downside of this type of lens holding system is the small thumb screws.  Not that anything is wrong with the thumb screws, but the fact that they are small pieces. I think it is some unwritten law of the universe that at some point a small piece or part will go missing or lost.  Just something to be mindful of when changing out lenses.

Speaking of changing things out, the BrickBlaster Pro has an interesting design when it comes to how the fixture is designed inside.  While I would love to show you what I am talking about, it is something The Black Tank company wants to keep under wraps for the moment.  It has to deal with the exchanging of the entire LED board. Lets say and LED or two are failing on your fixture.  Rather then swapping out or having to carry extra fixtures around, bring some spare LED boards with you.  Just a couple screws, the board comes out and disconnect it, re connect the new one and put back the screws and done.  The brains of the BrickBlaster Pro, which stays with the housing, knows which type of LED board you placed in, whether it be the RGBW, Variable White or a custom LED array that you had built.

The Menu System

Controlling and configuring the BrickBlaster Pro is fairly straight forward.  The menu system on the back is easily readable and provides helpful information such as the current temperature of the fixture.  Now I am one of those people that like to jump right in and start playing… manual, who needs a manual?!  The BrickBlaster Pro was easy to get started and up and running and spitting out lumen goodness.

Within the onboard menu system, you have three different modes that the fixture can run in, DMX, Color Wash and Manual Mode.  The DMX mode is pretty easy to understand, set the DMX address and either 8-bit or 16-bit mode and away you go.  The other two modes are for control at the fixture.  With Manual Mode, you can set any of the four colors to a specific DMX value from 0 to 255 and leave it, no DMX console or control required.  The last mode, Color Wash has all kinds of control and function for a set-it-and-forget-it running.  You have the ability to control the speed and colors of a wash that will keep scrolling until you turn the fixture off.

In addition to the menu system on the back, you’ll find a 5 pin DMX in and Out to daisy chain fixtures together.  You’ll also find a Neutrik Powercon connector for powering up the fixture.  I personally would have like to seen a powercon pass through connector for powering up multiple fixtures at once.  But with the 4″ cube size of the fixture, that might not be possible.

Built into this small package is a fan that help keep the LEDs cool.  The fan is fairly quite, I really only noticed the fan running when I was adjusting settings on the menu and a breeze from the fan was coming out the air vent on the back of the fixture.  As with any LED fixture, the LEDs must be cooled in order to prolong their life.  The on board thermal management helps keep the temperature in check and assures they keep pushing lumens out for their life expectancy.

Conclusion

Over all I was highly impressed with the output of the fixture.  Would would have guessed that four LEDs per color would be able to produce so much output in such a small package.  While the distance that I was throwing the LEDs was less then 20 feet, the area that I was hitting was well covered and super saturated. The RGB white was like many LED mixing towards white, not the typical “white” that we preserve as white, but more of a pinkish hue.  Thus the addition of the white LEDs.  Adding those in softened the white and made some paler and pastel colors which make me giddy with joy.

The BrickBlaster Pro holds up fairly well and packs a punch for such a small package.  The fixture can find use in a wide variety of venues and situations where color, small form factor are essential.  Since the fixture is not sealed from the elements, dry locations are a must. The BrickBlaster Pro would fit into almost any type event for uplighting and washing where control is not necessary, but maybe simple color changing to static colors are.

I enjoyed my time with the BrickBlaster Pro.  Thank you to The Black Tank company for allowing me time to experience the fixtures.  Again, sorry I missed you at LDI. Next time, that will not happen! Look for some enhancements and up grades to the fixture as well as new LED fixtures from The Black Tank Company. To learn more about the BrickBlaster Pro, be sure to visit The Black Tank’s website at www.theblacktank.com.

Your Thoughts

Have you seen the BrickBlaster Pro in person?  What did you think?  I would love to hear your thoughts about the fixture in the comments section of the review.  While you’re writing something, what did you think of this review? Did it help, did you feel it was informative? I always love to hear what you think!

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