Lighting

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ETC's stand had hints of decadence with a huge baroque proscenium arch set into it, displaying the company's sine wave dimmers in the 'back stage' whilst control and lighting equipment was mainly displayed in the resulting 'FOH' areas. The stand also naturally echoed the company's Hopper-inspired headquarters unveiled in June this year. ETC launched its Smartfade products onto the American market, the newest addition to its Smart Solutions compact lighting control range. Designed to give users at all skill levels the tools to program a lighting show, SmartFade has three operating modes:

Two-Scene, Normal, and DMX Backup. There's no learning curve for novice or first-time users: the simple two-scene mode provides a concise, easy-to-operate 12- or 24-channel, two-scene preset console with a manual or timed crossfade section, bump buttons with master and a grand master. The Normal mode i

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Goddard Design Co, responsible for the Lil'DMXter amongst other products, has developed an interesting software accessory for the LDs or board ops - the Virtual Magic Sheet. Now, instead of having pages of channel lists on the monitors, you can display them on the screen as a graphical representation of the lighting plan. Creating a live Magic Sheet at the designer's production desk or on a laptop computer anywhere in the theatre, it's driven via a Wi-Fi link to the DMX output of any control system. Channel numbers can be placed anywhere on the screen with a simple drag-and-drop interface; labels and arrows and other graphic shapes can then be added to organize the drawing. You can then plug in any console's DMX data stream and watch your plan come to life! Everything from intensity, to colour - at last a simple tool that offers the designer the ability to view lighting control data on h

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Andy Graves was on hand at Pulsar to demonstrate the company's increasingly wide range of LED fixtures, which are finding their way into more and more applications - including club and bar installations, architectural lighting, and television and stage environments. The range was recently enhanced with the addition of a range of 17 decorative MR16-sized fittings for interior design applications. The fittings are based around the ChromaMR16 Heart, which has 18 high-power LEDs and is supplied with 3m of lightweight ChromaFlex cable. Other recent additions from Pulsar include the ChromaBatten200 and ChromaFlood200 - both 200W fixtures rated IP65 for exterior use.

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Holowalls' stand was one of the most eye-catching at the show: the refracted colours generated by these films is highly effective - especially when demonstrated with the aid of a Martin Atomic Strobe!

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Compulite was showing its Vector lighting control series, offering advanced console design for handling conventional and automated fixtures, dual processor design for high performance and stability, a familiar Windows XP environment, VX Works real-time operating system, and an interactive toolbar for rapid programming. The Vector comes in three colours (Red, Green, and Blue), each of which has specific capabilities.

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Enttec, the Australian manufacturer whose Datagate was a nominee at the PLASA Show's Awards for Innovation this year, was also at LDI. The company's Nicolas Moreau reports that the response to Datagate has been good since PLASA. Sharing the company's stand at LDI was another Antipodean lighting innovator, Martin Searancke, who demonstrated his Light Factory PC-based lighting control software. His motivation in developing this system was a realization that most software on the market tended to cater for moving lights; he was also conscious, he explains, of other packages' poor use of 'screen real estate'. Light Factory, he says, is "a no-compromise approach of traditional dimmer control and fully featured moving light support". Introduced just one year ago, Light Factory is now in its third version and has established a respectable core of users in that time.

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Vari-Lite introduced its new VL2500 spot and wash lights, however it was the VL3500Q that was one of the stars of the show. Even the normally understated Philip Norfolk became animated when it came to discussing this fixture: with 50% audible reduction in noise output from the standard VL3500, it is ideal for theatre use, perhaps even FOH. It has an incredibly even field of intensity and very fast colour mixing potential: however, the shutter system must truly be the highlight of this fixture, with a nine-motor system it can go incredibly small and still remain very sharp - and the shape is totally repeatable.

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With media servers being one of the buzz words at the show, TMB was showcasing the Hippotizer range from Green Hippo, which received much attention at PLASA this year. In addition, G-Lec announced the appointment of TMB as its exclusive sales partner in North America and launched its first for-sale unit, the LightFrame. The TMB stand was also the base for the men of Carallon, namely Nick Archdale and Richard Mead, the former Flying Pigs who have been keeping themselves busy since leaving the High End Systems fold earlier in 2004. Their new Pharos solid state architectural controller was receiving an excellent response at LDI, Mead told us. The system offers a cost-effective solution for controlling entertainment and LED lighting in architectural environments. Pharos offers real-time control of playback selection and lighting levels; playback of scenes, sequences, effects video clips and

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At A.C.T. Lighting the folks from MA Lighting (distributed in the US by A.C.T) were on hand to explain the latest refinements and additions to the grandMA console. The grandMA version 5.3 features a full blind editor, which works parallel to the live programmer. In addition, the console now supports WYSIWYG autofocus functionality via Ethernet directly. Keeping up with the times, MA has released the grandMAVideo, a new media-server application for all grandMA consoles, and coming soon is dimMA sine-wave, a new module with IGBT technology; the dimMA sine-wave modules will feature 4x3 kVA and 2x6kVA dimmer channels and will be based on pulse-width modulation with 40 kHz for extremely smooth waveforms. Also distributed by A.C.T. is the Frog 2 console from Zero 88. In this edition of the Frog line, there are no restrictions imposed by the hardware design. Multiple playback, user-definable co

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Jireh Supplies Inc announced that it is now the exclusive North American distributor for The Effects Company from the UK, and proudly showcased the full product range on stand. There were also live demonstrations of the spectacular CO2 Jet system and Cirrus Lowsmoke. Gene Byce, of Jireh Supplies was very excited about the potential of all The Effects Company's products, particularly their quality and ease of use.

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Less than a month after PLASA, Artistic Licence had even more new innovations on its stand. The latest product is Visual Patch - a fabulous invention for those using lots of fixtures with plenty of channels per fixture. Combining RDM protocol, a lighting console and a video camera, the system allows you to simply point the camera at the stage and press the Visual Patch button. The console then uses RDM to turn each lamp on, analyzes the position, shape and size of the lamp via the video camera, adds it to the patch and automatically sets the lamp start address, solving that dreadful problem of complex number crunching when patching. Soon it'll be possible to forget the boring numbers bit for good!

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GE Lighting had several additions to its Showbiz line of bulbs. The Showbiz CSR800/SE/HR lamp is designed for film production settings, the result of a close collaboration with Mole-Richardson. A series of four CSR metal-halide lamps, the CSR400/S/DE, CSR575/S/DE, CSR700/S/DE, and CSR/1200/S/DE are designed for use in moving lights. The 80W F80BX/Cinera Plus 32 and 36W F36BX/Cinema Plays 32 are designed for indoor film shoots using 3,200° Kelvin tungsten lamps. The CHM150/PAR56 lamp is designed for architectural and retail applications.

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Lee Filters' sales director Ralph Young gave a warm welcome, and reported that the show was going very well and that there had been a great deal of interest in the new designer colours released by Lee earlier this year. The stand also featured an amazing piece of dichroic glass sculpture, which we'd rather like for the office.

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New from Robert Juliat is the Espion 2, a hand-held, battery-powered DMX analyzer with features including a DMX cable tester, DMX input receiving, DMX output sending (memories/macros), level catpure (memory recording), DMX input analyzer and reformer, moving light test facilities (library), and USB connector. Linked to a computer through the USB interace, Espion allows you to check all parameters plus DMX stream, in real time, on your computer screen.

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Osram introduced its new Ostar compact high-powered LED offering more than 120 lumens output and measuring 3cm x 1cm. Ostar's RGB lightsource consists of one red, one blue and two green thin-film chips, a ceramic carrier for interconnection andthermal management, and supporting electronics for over-voltage and over-heating protection. Also shown was the QXL 750.77 Quick eXchange lamp, which offers1500 hour lamp life, utilizes eXtreme Seal Technology and is designed for use in theatres, studios and architectural applications. The SharXS 200 HTI, a double-ended metal halide lamp, also uses eXtreme Seal technology, delivers exceptional brightness, and can withstand increased thermal stress. The new Osram SFc10-4 is a pre-focused socket that can be wired for either end and is designed to work with all of the lamps in the SharXS series. The Osram Planon flat lamp technology was also displaye

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Apollo Design showed the new Smart Color line of colour changers. The three models feature quiet operation, a dual speed single fan, variable scroll speed, and a self-tensioning gel string. Apollo premiered three new gel colours - Putting Green, Margarita Green and Green Diffusion, as well as 90 new gobo patterns, 45 of which are glass.

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Lycian showed the prototype of their 3k-xenon short-throw spotlight that features three dichroic slots, a left/right top/bottom chopping shutter and side mounted gobo slots. For long-throw applications, the 1294 SuperArc 4k features a nichrome/steel iris/zoom lens system and achieves 5,000 foot-candles at 100 feet.

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PRG, having merged with VLPS, got to show the latter company's Virtuoso EX1 media server, with features that include real-time rendering, keystone correction, three interactive 3-D objects, two separate background layers, positional camera, ambient and directional light source, crossfading of all elements, colour-mixing, object mapping of textures, videos or still images, the ability to interact with cues, and high-resolution (16-bit) control of most parameters. The product uses the first 218 channels of a DMX-512 universe.

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Making its LDI debut was Lamina Ceramics, maker of LED sources of unusually high brightness. The company has earned a lot of media attention, including a story in The New York Times, and a very favorable quote from lighting designer Jules Fisher. The company's ultra-high lumen RGB light engine is, they say, 10 times brighter than any previously demonstrated and generates light in any of more than 16,000,000 colours, including white.

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UK - When the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) opened on 26 November it became one of Europe's most vibrant arts developments to date. After 30 months of construction, the £104.2m venue will be home to seven leading Welsh cultural organizations, staging musicals, opera, ballet and dance day and night.

The 33,000sq.m building occupies a key site in Cardiff Bay's 'Inner Harbour'. Daylight floods the building, as 15cm thick glass open the foyers to views both outward and inward, and at night the lights of the foyer will be seen from afar. The striking building inscription is a poem composed by leading Welsh poet and writer Gwyneth Lewis and reads, 'Creating truth like glass from inspiration's furnace, in these stones horizons sing.'

ETC has been involved with WMC almost from the beginning of the project, having delivered a truckload of equipment as far back as the summer of 2003

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Along with the newly-revised DMX Coffee Pot, Mark II, Doug Fleenor Design was also showing the Remote Addressing Device (RAD). The RAD gives users status information on their fixtures, and can be used to set DMX addresses. The LED300 Power Supply features six 4-pin XLR outputs to power up to six Color Kinetics Color Blast 12-style fixtures. The LED300 Power Supply also features numerous built-in effects, and can be used without a console.

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City Theatrical had a variety of products on hand, including their WDS OEM Wireless DMX receiver, which can be built into any DMX device to provide wireless connectivity. The PDS-750 CB Touring Power Supply is for use with Color Kinetics fixtures, and features seven types of user configurable fade and chase routines. The WDS-equipped AutoYoke can convert a standard ETC Source Four unit into a spotlight; there are a variety of accessories also available.

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Martin Professional had, as usual, plenty of products to show. The Maxedia digital media composer is the company's entry in the imaging sweepstakes. The units's integrated DMX control provides full control of both lighting and video elements. Also on the control side, the Maxxyz Playback Wing made its US debut. Among the company's new networking products, the Ether2DMX allows users to increase the number of Maxxyz DMX universes and/or easily place DMX universes remotely on any TCP/IP Ethernet network, while the Ethernet Switch expands the networking and operable distance parameters of the Maxxyz console. In addition, Martin's ShowDesigner previsualization program now comes in Gold and Silver versions: the former is the full program while the latter is a streamlined edition. A number of club units were on show, including the Wizard Extreme and Ego X4 effects units and the SCX500 scanner.

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Le Maitre's Versa Fan is a flexible mounting DMX addressable fan that is dimmer based and features a ratchet based positive locking system. The company was also showing its EZ Kleen product for foggers, which increases the life of the machines, as well as the lightweight, portable, hand-held Quick Shot Confetti launcher, which will launch confetti up to 50ft.
  1. LDR / Strong Entertainment Lighting
  2. Robe Show Lighting
  3. Pathway
  4. Philips
  5. Strand Lighting
  6. OptiLED
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