The Latest From Philips at LDI 2010

If you were at LDI this year, you had to have noticed the Philips booth.  It was kind of hard to miss it.  Philips was dead smack in the middle of the floor with a huge open layout with an awesome circle truss FILLED with all of their latest LED products from all of their brands, Vari-Lite, Strand and Selecon.

My good friend and funny man from Philips, Peta Borchetta gave me a walking tour of the booth going over all the latest and greatest products. Ignore the interruptions for the peanut gallery, Alan Kibbe for the Vari-Lite division wanted to throw us off and get his five seconds on camera. Maybe next time Alan! ;)

Thanks Pete for the tour!

Philips Strand Leko Lite… The Strand SL is Reborn?

Take a look at Philips Strand latest fixture, the Leko Lite.  No, no, I mean it, take a REALLY close look at it.  Remind you of a fixture that recently went away? Maybe the Strand SL is a phoenix, it died and has been reborn as the Leko Lite, they do share a bunch of the same features and design aspects. We’ll come back to that…

The Leko Lite offers a fixed and variable beam angle fixture line up.  For the fixed beam, there is the 5, 10, 19, 26, 36 & 50.  In the variable or zoom fixtures, there is the 15 to 32 & the 23 to 50. As for lamps, the Leko Lite uses Philips Hi-Brite, FastFit Lamps at 575w, 750w in 115v and 800w in 230v. The FastFit Lamp socket is a neat feature, no more wrestling to get the burner house out the back. Although I am a little curious about how bench focusing works.

One thing that I loved from the SL line up was the 360 degree body rotation at the yoke.  The Leko Lite carries that feature forward.  Along with the ability to accept and change lens tubes with the SL line up of fixtures. I guess the Leko Lite really is the SL reborn.

For more information on the Philips Strand Leko Lite, visit their website at www.strandlighting.com.

Philips Selecon PL 1 LED

Philips Selecon has a new Architectural LED fixture available, the PL 1. It uses high output and fully homogenized RGBW LEDs with a variable beam from 14-50 degrees.

The PL 1 makes perfect sense for museums and other architectural installations where UV light may cause problems.  The PL 1 produces no ultra-violet (wavelengths of less than 400nm) in the UV-A, B, C or infrared (greater than 775nm) spectrum.

The fixture also has the ability to define maximum energy consumption with built in power preset from 30 watts to full power along with fan noise management.

For more information on the Philips Selecon PL 1 LED fixture, visit their website at www.seleconlight.com.

Sneak Peak at Philips/Selecon PL-3 LED Fresnel

When you reach the Broadway level of being a lighting designer, you can pretty much get what ever you want. I am not talking about fame and fourtune but new fixtures and technologies. Such as the case for Don Holder at the Broadway Lighting Master Classes this year. Mr. Holder put on a great session about LEDs vs Tungstens. Since Mr. Holder is a well respected and fantastic lighting designer, he has access to a load of products before they are even announced.

Such as the case with the sneak peak that we got of Philips/Selecon upcoming LED Fresnel, the PL-3. Mr. Holder was able to get not just one of these prototype fixtures, but two for his session. Yeah, I was a little jealous! ;) But enough about that, what about the PL-3.

The PL-3 uses three of the LED engines from the Vari-lite VLX fixture. That means that the PL-3 is a 3 engine, RGBW mixer at 90 watts per engine. Just like the VLX, the PL-3 color mixing happens behind the lens to give an even color out the front of the fixture. Speaking of light coming out the front, the PL-3 is putting out 8200 Lumens of LED goodness with a zoom range of 5 to 50 degree spread.

The entire fixture runs off just 320 watts of power and produces as much light as a 1000 watt tungsten fresnel. The PL-3 is still in the process of being developed but is rumored to have WDMX, WiFi, Network and DMX protocols included right on the fixture. If you look closely, you may notice the fixture housing and yoke are made of plastic. Since the fixtures runs a heck of a lot cooler then a typical tungsten fresnel of that size, Philips/Selecon was able to make the PL-3 even lighter by using a plastic composite.

The PL-3 is still not ready for the big time and like I mentioned, still in development so no release date has been announced yet along with pricing. I have heard hints of another version of the PL-3 is in the works, the PL-5. I’ll let you take a guess on what that means.

Take a look at some of the photos I was able to sneak in at the BLMC2010.

[nggallery id=55]

Strand Selecon Introduce SPX Fixed Beam Fixtures

Strand Selecon recently announced the arrival of the SPX Fixed Beam fixtures. The goal of the SPX series of fixtures is to help round out the entire line of Strand Selecon fixture range including the Pacific and Acclaim series of lights.

The SPX Series of fixtures use 220-240v lamps, the 600w GKV, the 600w GLB and the 800w GKV lamps.  Currently, I have not found any documentation or cross reference to a 110-120v lamp for the SPX fixture.  At 800w, Strand Selecon is stating that the SPX fixtures deliver up to 63% more light on stage compared to current industry benchmarks. The combination of this optical reflector design with premium optical lenses (supplied as standard) provides a crisp white light with no pinkish hues or other colour cast delivering both high definition pattern projection as well as the color results you deserve from your filter selections.

The Strand Selecon SPX is available in 14°, 19°, 26°, 36° and 50° lens which are interchangeable.  Also available are two zoom fixtures, a 15°-30° & 25°-50° spread.

To learn more about the Strand Selecon SPX series of fixtures and all its features, visit the Strand Selecon web site at www.seleconlight.com.

Rumor Mill: Selecon Prepin’ to Release New Fixture at ProLight + Sound

It looks like the small fortune I invested in a spy mic has finally paid off… well, finally given me something!  Back in early February, I sent a fruit basket to the Kiwi’s at Strand Selecon to celebrate Waitangi Day.  Little did they know a mic was hidden inside! I guess they never found it because it still works. Probably not after today though.

The “fruit Basket” must have been a favorite around the New Zealand office as it was left out during some important talks and picked up some VERY interesting tid bits. From what I was able to decipher from the audio is that Strand Selecon is preparing to announce and show a prototype of a new fixture at ProLight + Sound in Frankfurt Germany at the end of the month.

From there, on, things got a little garbled and I could not understand what was being said.  I hope someone didn’t eat the mic! If so, looks like I need to send another “care package” to New Zealand!

So what does this mean? Look for something new and exciting from Strand Selecon this year at ProLight + Sound.  If we are lucky, we might just see something State side sooner then later.  I’ll keep after the US rep and see what other details I can find out.

Selecon to Join Philips Entertainment Lighting Group

Selecon Lighting of New Zealand has decided to sell the company to Philips to become part of the Philips Global Entertainment Lighting Group.  Selecon will be joining such companies as Vari-Lite, Strand Lighting and Color Kinetics. Selecon will continue to operate as normal with no changes made to management.

To read more about the press release from Selecon, visit thier website at www.seleconlight.com.

USITT Conference & Stage Expo Begins!

Today is the start of the USITT 2009 Conference and Stage Expo in Cincinnati, Ohio.  The doors have opened to the Stage Expo and the show floor is filling up nicely. Throughout the day we will be updating events and products announced at the show live, right here on iSquint.net.

If you are attending the show, be sure to stop by our sponsors booths to pick up a copy of the 2009 iSquint-USITT poster:

Selecon Lighting – Booth 650

Enttec/Stage Research – Both 1040

If you are not attending the USITT Stage Expo, be sure to download a PDF of the 2009 iSquint-USITT poster here, or by clicking the poster to the left.

Follow all updates on the USITT Stage Expo by following our RSS feed here.

iSquint Poster At SETC

We have been receiving a couple of request for the iSquint poster that we had made and displayed at SETC this past week.  If you attended the show, you may have seen our poster hanging around the show floor and around the hotel.  We have had so many request for a copy of the poster that we have made a PDF version of the 12×18 poster for your viewing pleasure.  While we wish we had more to send out to every request, we do not.  A lucky bunch of attendees were able to receive a copy of the poster from our sponsor Selecon Lighting in their booth as well as at the Tech Mixer.

We do have plans for another promotion for USITT, but we are not letting the cat out of the bag yet.

Thanks for all the request for the poster.  You can download the PDF version right here.

Product Announcement: Selecon SDP Fixture

Selecon Lighting, those Kiwies from the southern hemisphere, New Zealand, are poised to announce the release of a new architectural lighting fixture, the Selecon Display Profile. The fixture is designed for track lighting systems in architectural and museum lighting. The Selecon Display Profile, or SDP delivers 3-4 times the light output of the Aureol BeamShaper, (also from Selcon) with accurate shaping of the beam and precise pattern/logo projection. The SDP has a couple of choices when it comes to lamps, the first being a low voltage tungsten Halogen 12v 100w or a Philips Mini-Master 20w CDM lamp.

The SDP also has two choices when it comes to zoom systems, a 15º–35º and 25º–50º. The fixture also includes two front accessory slots for colored glass, gel holder or for an animation motor disc. The SDP utilizes a D size pattern for projecting a logo or any number of steel or glass gobos.

THe SDP fixture is expected to be officially released as early as USITT Stage Expo next month. There have been mumblings that the fixtures will begin to ship April or May. We cannot determine what sort of pricing the fixture will start at, but contact your local Selecon dealer for more information and for pricing.