Lighting

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UK - A crucial factor when designing light fittings to replace existing technology is the overall efficiency of the system. Now available from Forge Europa is the world's most efficient power LED the Cree XR lamp with an efficacy of 47lm/w, says the company. At these levels LED technology is considerably more efficient than incandescent or halogen and is starting to encroach on the province of fluorescent lighting.

The XR series is available in a full range of colours including both warm and cool white and although white LEDs are often criticised for their lack of colour consistency, the CREE devices are all tested and sorted into tightly controlled bins for both colour and intensity. All parts are then supplied on reels of 1000 pieces with each reel only containing parts from one bin.

The Cree XR series also offers a number of other benefits including reduced thermal resistan

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UK - The Event Safety Shop (TESS) has strengthened its board with the appointment of Simon James and Tim Roberts as directors, with Hannah Charlton becoming operations manager. The announcement coincides with TESS receiving the investors In People Award in recognition of its positive culture and the ongoing development of staff.

Recent qualifications undertaken by staff to enhance the specialist skills required to work across different sectors include the NEBOSH General Certificate (Hannah Charlton), National Rigging Award A1 Assessor (Simon James) and the Institute of Acoustics Certificate of Competence in Workplace Noise Assessment (Tim Roberts).

TESS managing director Mike Richmond said: "The Investors In People award, along with our new infrastructure reflects a continuing commitment to expand the diversity of areas we work in, and raise the quality of service to clie

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USA - Baxter Controls (BCi) announces the immediate availability of 100-240v Power Supplies (P/S) for the Pocket Console line of products for ease of use worldwide.

With the creation of this new P/S, specifically for the world market, The Pocket Console DMX can now be used virtually anywhere. Electricians, lighting technicians and designers worldwide can now find out why these very portable units have sold so well from Broadway to Hollywood. From backstage to soundstage, The Pocket Console is found anywhere in the US where DMX is found, says the company. For the professional, this may be the most convenient, economical access to DMX control in the market today.

Each "Wall Wart" comes with a full kit of standard 'clip-on" male A/C adapters making The Pocket Console user friendly around the globe.

The BCi line includes the Original Pocket Console DMX, the Wall-M

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Poland - Earlier this year Danish beer and beverage company Carlsberg, with a little help from one of Poland's top lighting supply and design companies, GRODA, organized a party for its Polish employees at Torwar Bowl in Warsaw. The most attractive element of the evening's design was an enormous eight-legged spider truss. The creature was composed of eight legs and round circular truss body surrounding a 5.3m diameter ball.

Four legs, made of transparent tubes, were fixed to the ground. Inside each tube leg GRODA placed a Mac 300 washlight, Atomic strobe, and Jem ZR12-DMX fog machine. The MacC 300s worked to color the tubes while flashing Atomics created the illusion of quick motion. Fog from the ZR12s gave the plastic tubes a more solid appearance.

The spider's remaining four truss limbs (decorated with LED) and the round body were movable, which further enhanced the attracti

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UK - Entec Sound and Light supplied Russian superstar Philip Kirkorov with full lighting and sound production, and also co-ordinated other production elements including video and pyro for his sold out show at Hammersmith Apollo. It was part of an extensive two month European tour.

Entec has experience of working with several leading Russian artists, and for this show, their crew co-ordinated in advance with Kirkorov's touring crew to ensure the busy show day ran smoothly.

Lighting designer Boris Volkov design involved three upstage trussing triangles, constructed from mini-beam and hung off nine points from two rigging trusses, plus two straight A-type front and mid lighting trusses.

His operating style was based on 'beam technology' with lots of dramatic beam and gobo looks from lighting fixtures spread across all of the trussing elements. These included 26 Vari*Lite VL 200

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USA - Vari-Lite is pleased to announce the hiring of Rich Booth as brand manager for the complete line of Vari*Lite automated luminaires. With an extensive and exemplary marketing background, Booth will manage all Vari-Lite marketing and brand imaging campaigns. Booth joins technical marketing manager Heinz Roy, product manager George Masek, and public relations manager Bryan Matthews to complete the Vari-Lite marketing team.

"I am very pleased to have Rich guide our marketing team," says Steve Carson, Vari-Lite vice president and general manager. "He has shown a tremendous aptitude for leadership and his marketing knowledge is second to none. Through his supervision, I know that Vari-Lite will once again lead the industry with fresh and unique marketing campaigns."

"When I first began to look into Vari-Lite, I knew instantly it would be marketing prof

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Apollo Design Technology's Keith Kankovsky and Milad Khouli were in attendance. The company reports that it is now a leading supplier of gobos to European moving light manufacturers - quite an achievement for a company from Indiana, especially considering the abundance of European gobos on offer. They found the show fairly busy, with most interest directed at their high resolution glass and steel patterns, and at the Smart Color scroller. Apollo also experienced strong international interest at this show.

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Clay Paky always has a major presence at SIB, and this year was no exception. The large stand, with its hands-on demonstrations of its leading Alpha range of moving head luminaires - not to mention its hospitality - was a hive of activity throughout the show. The Alpha range, first introduced at SIB two years previously, now offers lighting designers a choice of 10 units. The latest models added to the range are the Alpha Profile 1200 and the Alpha Wash 1200.

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Studio Due's Graziano Carosi was keen to talk about the company's new factory in China, stressing that the factory, working closely with the company's Italian staff, enabled prices to be reduced whilst quality had remained unchanged. The company presented a new model of the City Color, with 2500 or 1800W of power. A new asymmetric bracket gives the head more inclination, and the unit is IP54-rated. Also presented was the Shark 250 and 150 units as well as the CityLED, which with RGB DMX-controllable LEDs offers a cost-effective graphic solution for architectural applications.

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Behringer kicked things off with another 10 new products to add to the 32 launched at NAMM. "We continue to be all about value for money," said Michael Leidel, sales manager for Behringer's European Business Centre, which makes no distinction between pro audio and MI sales channels. "We're still very strong in small mixers and 19" rackmount units, but computer-based recording is the big future for us." Leidel also dismissed the recent news about Behringer being fined $1 million in the US as purely a local issue, with no effect on - or relevance to - European trading conditions. Moving on, then . . .

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The team from Pulsar reported a busy show, with lots of "important" people and overseas visitors attending. As seen in the March issue at ARC, the new Chroma Range has just begun shipping and includes: the ChromaBatten 50, ChromaStrip X3 and ChromaBankIP.

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MA Lighting's GrandMA products also dominated: grandMA video version 1.28 was released at the show with three new key features - admin, multi-screen preview and soft-edge blending. These new functions, in combination with previously released ones such as four live video inputs, the keystone effect, beam shape effects, and the FOH blind editing function directly from a grandMA console, make grandMA video a powerful tool. www.vari-lite.com www.pulsarlight.com www.lightpower.de

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Hot news on the High End stand was the Studio Command H, which was launching at Frankfurt. High End's Fons de Vreede demonstrated a new 1kW tungsten fixture which will be shipping in a couple of weeks, and hinted at more news to come before PLASA.

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Visual Productions' focus was on the Matrix Mania, a lighting tool for the control of LED matrixes, which has covered considerable ground since its launch at the show a year ago, and can now render full animations. The company's newest hardware device, the Frontier, was launched at the show and is a playback unit with the capacity for 16 pre-programmed sequences. A new VisualDMX software version is also available.

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News from ADB included their EuroDim dimming system, which now offers silent dimming of practically any load using new sine wave modules. The dimmer offers self-protection against short circuits, self-limitation of peak current, elimination of lamp filament noise and noise induced in audio equipment. The sine wave dimmer modules for the EuroDim ranges can be retrofitted into existing installations, and can coexist with conventional thyristor modules in the same cabinet.

ADB's WARP lighting fixture range was on display, with new improved features and discharge light sources. A low-noise colour changer with an adaptor plate that reduces spill light from the front of the fixture has been introduced. WARP/HMI is a new fixture range that uses HMI/MSR discharge lamps and flicker-free electronic ballasts; the fixtures are silent due to their fan-less design.

ADB's Phoenix and Mentor console

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UK - Serious Stages stepped in at short notice to build the decking and substructure required to support the Ice Space venue - the world's first ever five Star Arctic attraction - at London's Tower Bridge.

Serious - one of the UK's leading staging companies - has supplied over 2000sq.m of it's proprietary Red Deck extra heavy duty steel base system which is supporting over 200 tonnes of ice.

The deck is constructed from Universal I beams that span between RMD Shoring System and customised head standards. Infill beams fit between the primary I beams every 600mm to produce an incredibly strong base. The infill beams are capped with timber and then finished with 25mm birch plywood panels to form the deck's surface. Each 'bay' measures 2.4 x 2.4 metres.

Serious has also supplied 12 internal support arches for the structure as well as all the perimeter external steps, wheelchair

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Spotlight were exhibiting as at SIB, but new for Frankfurt was the Accurate BLITZ Stage, a powerful 5W moving-head laser, complete with gobos, animations and frost effects, which is also DMX controllable.

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Amongst other products, LSC Lighting showed the DNAnet/R which is a DMX/ArtNet converter, as both an input or an output module. The unit includes a fully working RDM for bi-directional communication with RDM enabled devices. ArtNet View software enables full configuration and monitoring of any number of DNAnet/R units via ethernet networks. Also exhibited was the e24 v2, an evolution of LSC's e24 compact touring dimmer system.

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Anolis, the architectural LED lighting manufacturer formed just over a year ago in a joint venture between Robe Show Lighting and Australian distributor ULA, was again exhibiting adjacent to Robe, and was one of the companies reporting a good level of interest from overseas buyers at SIB. General feedback from Anolis was that one year on from its inception, expectations are being exceeded and general manager John Saunders was positive about the future.

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Last month, the total number of visitors to the combined shows reached 100,000 for the first time, a 10% rise over last year, while exhibitors increased by 5%. And this over just four days, with a 16% rise in overseas visitors. No wonder there are long queues at the taxi ranks.

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USA - BSR E.19, Recommended Practice for the use of Class A Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupters (GFCIs) intended for personnel protection in the Entertainment Industry, is available for public review. The draft standard gives advice on where, when, and how to use GFCIs rated for 100A and less in the entertainment industry. These devices are used for personnel protection in entertainment applications encompassing places of assembly, the production of film, video and broadcast, theatrical productions, carnivals, circuses, fairs and similar events in North America. The official ANSI 45-day public review period starts on May 26, but the draft standard is available now at http://www.esta.org/tsp/documents/public_review_docs.php. The public review runs through until the end of 10 July 2006.

Reviewer

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Ireland - An exhibit commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising opened recently in a newly renovated space at the National Museum of Ireland's Collins Barracks site in Dublin. Occupying a central position in The Easter Rising: Understanding 1916 is an original copy of the 1916 Proclamation Of Independence, one of the most important documents in modern Irish history.

The renovated space enables museum experts, who worked with exhibit designers Haley Sharpe Design Ltd of Leicester and lighting designers DJW of Beaulieu, to ensure acceptable levels of light and humidity in order to display such precious documents safely.

Lighting designer David Willrich, of DJW, said that one of the main considerations behind designing the lighting for The Easter Rising: Understanding 1916 was observing conservation light level requirements whilst providing sufficient l

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Martin Professional's Tungsten MAC TW1 was a a bit of a crowd puller but I was able to grab a few moments with Martin's Harry de Lon who walked me through the fixture due to ship in the summer. CMY colour mixing providesa full range, from delicate pastels to deep saturation. The standard lens gives a variable range of 20-40° with other options available. The company says that the MAC TW1 1200W fixture is the brightest in its class, and also that it is exceptionally quiet - a feat achievable through a new, (patent pending) silent cooling design which traps the heat and dissipates it away from the back of the fixture. The MAC 700 Wash was also on display (for more on this, see our Technical Focus review, pages 84-89), and other important launches include Maxxyz PC, a PC-based version of the popular Maxxyz console.

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Another Italian lighting manufacturer, DTS has been around for many years, but has only recently begun to make its mark in the moving light market. It had a strong presence at SIB, showed a number of new products including its powerful new XM 1200 Spot. Features include CMY colour-mixing plus a colour wheel (seven colours plus white), two gobo wheels with six gobos plus open on each, and an effects wheel with a rotating and indexable beam-shaper, three prisms and a frost. Using a Philips MSR 1200/SA discharge lamp, the luminaire boasts a 5,600°K colour temperature output, an intelligent cooling system, protection circuitry and power-saving mode. The rugged unit has an anodized aluminium body with ABS covering over the yoke and head, and comes with a two-year guarantee. Comprehensive technical support is offered online. DTS also conducted tours of its nearby offices and factory premis
  1. A.C. Lighting
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  3. Color Kinetics wins $1.4m attorney's fees
  4. r Ayrton
  5. Ready-Steady-Light!
  6. LDR
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