LDI 2019 took place from Nov. 18-24 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, with the North Hall exhibition area open from Oct. 23-25. More than 400 exhibitors and a record-setting 16,000 attendees took part, according to the official after-show tally.
My favorite place to stop and take a break was at the Dot Image booth. This Japanese company had a customized circular truss system that had a wide variety of LED twinkling products going up and down on a set of kinetic winches. There were Saturn-type rings with gyroscope-looking activity, chandeliers of stunning imagery bounced in formation everywhere with so many light sources. I don’t think I ever saw the same thing twice.
Lighting product-wise, myself — and everyone passing the Robe booth — thought, ‘Great just what the world needs, another tilting batten.’ Then they demonstrated the flower effect from the same batten. ‘Game over, you win,’ we responded. With most of the multi-cell LED lights on the floor all doing the same thing, it was pleasant to see the SolaPix at the High End booth. They have illuminated the edges of each cell and this just brings me joy as it’s different and cool. The Claypaky Xtylos had some great saturated colors in a fast beam fixture sourced by lasers.
Effects-wise, I was most impressed with the new bubble machine from Froggy’s Fog. Their Fobbles (smoke filled bubbles) are always a hit, and now you can fill an arena with bubbles without having to spec 20 machines for that one effect.
For the full report, go to https://plsn.com/articles/features/show-report-ldi-2019/
