This week I have been testing out a slew of new lights that manufacturers have been coming out with this year. And I have to admit that I have been impressed with all of them.
I am tired with the “Bigger is better” approach I have seen in recent years. Between the new VL’s, the Mac 3 and the Showgun, I see these gargantuan fixtures that almost require more than 2 people to hang them on a truss as well as a forklift to stack the road cases.
So I am pleased to see this new line of Coemar fixtures and a few others that have just been released. They are 300 watt fixtures, but you would never know from the brightness of these babies. While I don’t think that any of these is the ultimate light, they each bring something cool to the table.
Coemar is making a fixture touted as the “Infinity ACL”, in recognition of the tight light beam emitted from an Aircraft Landing bulb. This beam is bright as heck in a tight collimated beam. And if that’s not small enough, this light has a series of small gobo holes in a wheel that can make the beam look like a 2” shaft of light reminiscent of a Darth Vader weapon.
They also have a new LED cyc fixture called the Stage light LED. It looks like a miniature cyc lite that has 6 rows of LED’s on little battens that tilt individually for focus. These make an incredible disco effect and at the same time give the user the ability to focus certain rows on different objects without the light fixture physically moving itself.
Clay Paky has this new Alpha Beam 300 wash fixture out. This sucker moves like nothing I have seen in years. The pan is so fast one can literally black out the shutter, refocus the pan position and turn it back on in another location in less than a second. I swear it’s a punchy little bright lite that can certainly play with the big boys on any tour. Gone are the days when little moving lights were just used for eye candy.
Elation has their Impression series of moving LED heads out now. These are compact and weigh almost nothing. They are the brightest moving LED heads I have seen and take up no space. They may be a little pricey, but the fact is one never has to pay for the price of changing a bulb.
I just picked up a lens from the VL3500 wash. This lens alone weighs more than any of these fixtures. I understand the need for such things especially for shows with large amounts of video content splashed everywhere. But if I was a club owner or a small touring band I certainly would start looking at these new fixtures.
