Because of that, designers and directors have had to be careful about over-using strobes, giving them enough time for the lamps to cool. Philips Entertainment said enough of that, and designed a fixture to nearly match a strobe’s intensity while also offering energy savings, a compact design, eye candy effects and the popular light source of the day, the LED.
Philips Entertainment launched its LED-focused Showline Series in mid-2012, and in 2013, they added the SL NITRO 510 LED Strobe Luminaire to that product line.
The Design
Most of the Showline SL series fixtures (except the SL PAR 150 ZOOM) can interconnect and work together in visual designs that are bigger than the sum of their parts. Because the SL NITRO 510 is part of that design paradigm, it gives a way for LDs to incorporate strobing flash in their larger low-res video designs.
Want to create a huge strobe wall? This fixture’s no-tools connection system lets you easily assemble a number of SL NITRO 510 units together, starting with the single hanging point for the first one. Each SL NITRO 510 fixture is also designed for easy hanging, and the fixtures can also be floor mounted with ease.
Cabling is just as simple. The SL NITRO 510 is designed with PowerCon in and pass-through — one on either side of the fixture for quick daisy-chaining. Ditto for the 5-pin DMX in and pass through. Since the SL NITRO 510 takes a total of 3 amps of power over 120V, you can run up to six fixtures off a single 20 amp circuit. If you plan to run the fixtures off 240V, you can combine up to 13 fixtures. Yes, the fixture has auto-sensing power, a nice feature.
The Source
One of the biggest advantages of the SL NITRO 510 over conventional strobes is, of course, its LED source, which does away with all those concerns about overheated bulbs. You can see them just by looking at the front of the fixture — 1,350 high power white SMD LEDs. Together they add up to a truly blinding quantity of luminous output — more than 68,000 lumens, in fact.
The 16 by 4 inch LED zone is broken up in to six zones of control, which points to another advantage over conventional strobes — the option of using the SL NITRO 510 for effects as well. You can control the six zones when you run the fixture in 16-bit zone mapping mode, and there are built in patterns available in all mapping modes. Think of each of these six zones as mini strobes-within-a-strobe. Within just a single fixture, you can program some interesting patterns. When you start hanging multiple fixtures together, the options multiply.
The Menu Display
One of the seemingly trivial things that I really like about the SL NITRO 510, and all the Showline products, is the menu system. We’ve all experienced less-than-optimum interfaces for accessing fixture controls — the four-button designs, and those displays that look like digital clock readouts, with cryptic codes that need to be deciphered before you can understand what’s going on with the fixture. Not so with the Showline menu systems. They are easy to read and navigate. No more four-letter abbreviations, guesswork, and four-letter muttering — everything is spelled out in a clean view.
Floor Mounting
The SL NITRO 510 is a bit on the heavy side at 17.6 pounds. The placement of the side brackets is also a bit of a concern when floor mounting the fixture. The included yoke plate is intended for “traditional” single clamp hanging and locking the handles down does allow for floor mounting without concern.
At a Glance
Dazzling Options
The SL NITRO 510 is a big improvement on traditional strobes. Along with the virtual elimination of overheating concerns, LED zone mapping and interconnectivity enable designers to use these fixtures for a wide variety of visual effects. And the intensity of the output is just as blinding. I made the mistake of watching a zone mapping demo at full intensity and still saw stars 20 minutes later.
Showline SL NITRO 510 from Philips Entertainment
Optics: 1350 high power White SMD LEDs (120° beam angle)
Variable Strobe: 0-650 ms
Strobe Rate: 0-30 flashes per second
Luminance: >68,000 lumens
Blinder Effect: Full on capability of nearly unlimited duration without any loss in output
Special Effects: Ramp up, ramp down, ramp up-down, random flash, single flash, zone chases and shapes
Controls: DMX-512A(RDM), Local LCD control, Master/slave
Operating Modes: “Classic” 1, 3, and 4 channel; 16-bit; 16-bit Zone Mapping
Power: 100-240VAC, 360W
Size: 16”x 11”x 4”
Weight: 17.6 lbs.
Certifications: CE, ETL, cTick
MSRP: $2,500
