It’s the start of a new year, and I wish you all a great upcoming one. I will always be a lighting designer foremost, even if I don’t practice the craft as often as I did before becoming an editor. So my Christmas wish list is always for new lighting toys. I’m glad to see the birth of some new lighting products in the last year as well as the retooling of some old fixtures that have come back from the dead. I took a few minutes to list some of the new tools in my toy box that I personally would love to get my hands on.
Bright Ideas
High End Systems is sticking to their goal of being an all-LED sourced company of fixtures. It was also great to see that they could pull this off with all the brightness that their Sola line of fixtures is putting out. They have set the bar in brightness and proven that, yes, it can be done. We now have LED-sourced hard edge fixtures that are as bright as the arc light-driven competitor models.
On the flip side, we have Blizzard Lighting which has always been all about LED fixtures. They released their first arc-sourced bulb in a light fixture. We actually have a Road Test on that Kryo.Morph fixture that just hit the streets (page 56). Equivalent in brightness to the 700W series that started years ago, this baby lists at quite a competitive price.
Martin Lighting again shows us why the Atomic strobe just may still be the reigning king in this market place. Having switched to an amazingly bright LED source, they added bells and whistles to this new model as well. I love the fact that one can still use the old gel scrollers on the new model, without an external PSU.
Clay Paky has brought a tear to my eye by bringing back the mirrored light-scanner fixture. With the addition of the Spheriscan doing 360° continuous panning, they are in a good place. Of course, this model is quite beefed up in comparison to the old CP Golden Scans of 20 year ago.
Robe has a killer new wash fixture that is impressing lots of folks. Complementing last year’s big hard-edged BMFL is the BMFL WashBeam. I have not gotten my hands on one of these bright animals yet, but my gut feeling is this will be as big of a hit as its brother.
Philips Vari-Lite has their matching pair of VL4000 fixtures released now, and they are popping up on theatrical shows all over the place. Last year’s final Rush tour, as well as the current AC/DC one, showed the world that they mean business.
A Fresh Start
Chauvet has given us all a great new option to the old mole fey with their new Strike 4. I like the look and feel of this new 4 lighter. With various dimmer modes, I am able to make the LED bulbs react just like incandescent for the perfect “attack and decay” effects.
Elation released perhaps the most popular hybrid fixture of the year from the word on the street. The Platinum FLX packs a punch, whether it is in beam or normal mode. They also took a crack at revitalizing the digital media moving head projector with their release of the Emotion.
ADJ impressed the heck out of me with a lot of their effects lights, including the WiFLY series this year. It’s revolutionizing wireless control signal to the fixtures.
Ayrton continues to be at the top of the LED innovation game. The DreamPanel, CosmoPix and MagicDots are showing up on many of the big productions. You can see a lot of their products in this month’s Production Profile on The Weeknd (it starts on page 24).
GLP released my favorite LED strip light so far. I loved the way I could control all the features of the impression X4 Bar, and the zoom was just to die for.
Astera is still making my favorite battery-operated LED products, and SGM continues to crank out those great waterproof fixtures I just adore.
Lastly, I’m waiting patiently for Syncrolite to send me one of their new SyncroMITE products that feature 48,000 lumens of brightness.
For Nook Schoenfeld’s introduction to the Jan. 2016 issue of PLSN, go to http://plsn.me/201601ednote
