Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
LSi 40 - Banner - July-Nov 2025

Lighting

Details
UK - London-based A/V system integrator Live Business International (LBI) has continued its relationship with P&O Ferries with the commissioning this month of a brand new entertainment lighting system (following the extensive new audio system that LBI installed onboard the Bilbao 18 months ago) for its cruise ship Pride of Bilbao, the latest step in the ship's facilities upgrade programme.

The ship plies one of P&O's most popular routes - three-day mini-cruises between Portsmouth and Bilbao, capital of the Basque region of northern Spain. The complete installation had to be carried out during one such cruise - and even during a gale-force storm.

LBI was asked to design a new lighting system for the 700-seat Silverstone Lounge, the Pride of Bilbao's multi-function entertainment suite which hosts a multitude of different events including speech-based entertainment, live theatre shows

Details
UK - A.C. Lighting announced a new staff appointment at the company's Southern sales office in High Wycombe. Peter Nesbitt joins the company's UK Sales department as lighting sales executive, providing office and in the field support for the company's expanding range of leading lighting brands.

Nesbitt brings over 30 years entertainment lighting knowledge and experience to the role. After beginning his career working in repertory and college theatres for ten years, he then became a partner in established theatre lighting business, Ancient Lights, working in both hire and sales. Nesbitt went on to become the company's managing director, before leaving in 1995 to work as a freelance technical consultant on projects, which included large lottery bids. In 1998, whilst contracting for Elstree Light & Power, Nesbitt became a permanent employee and covered a variety of roles in his tim

PLASA Show 2025 - Banner - June-Aug 2025

Details
UK - Computers Unlimited has teamed up with the Central School of Speech & Drama in London to stage the first ever UK VectorWorks Spotlight event.

VectorWorks Spotlight is an entertainment and lighting design software, which merges sophisticated 2D drafting and powerful 3D modelling with advanced lighting design and production tools. The organizer says the event will provide an opportunity to see some outstanding projects created using VectorWorks Spotlight.

Mark Stephens, director of The Design Division (a specialist VectorWorks reseller and producer of the new VectorWorks Spotlight Training CD), will start the event with an overview of VectorWorks. He will then demonstrate the specific Spotlight features, and will also show the new VectorWorks training CD which now includes specific movies on Spotlight. Alex Wardle, a lighting designer and technical manager, will cover setting up

Details
UK - Bill Bailey's one-man stand-up show, Part Troll, toured for 11 weeks prior to its present residency at the the Lyric Theatre, Shaftsbury Avenue and has so far had its West End run extended twice, such has been its popularity and success. So what makes Bailey's show so unique? Perhaps the way he combines music with stand-up and delivers both so ingeniously, using a combination of music genres, story-telling and three carefully crafted jokes - which are spread thinly through the show!

Featuring plenty of audience participation and some pretty weird and wonderful musical instruments, the show depends on communicating every intonation, facial expression and word to the audience - making sound and lighting both essential ingredients to the successful delivery of the material. Prior to the show, I met up with FOH engineer Ian Horne and LD Arturo Ollandini, both of whom are generally mo

Details
USA - Elation Professional has introduced the CMY Zoom-250, a 250W DMX-compatible colour changer using new colour-mixing technology to produce ultra-smooth transitions between any two points on the colour spectrum.

Designed primarily for stage use and the professional lighting rental market, the CMY Zoom-250 offers the distinct advantage of CMY colour mixing, an innovative system based on graduated cyan, magenta and yellow filters. Users can achieve a continuous range of unlimited colours by varying the amount of each filter from 0 to 100 percent. The unit can also be set to scroll continuously through the entire spectrum, from white all the way to ultraviolet.

"Even if you are going from pink to dark blue, the transition is nearly seamless with the CMY Zoom-250," said John Lopez, sales manager for Elation Professional. "With a regular colour wheel, you'd see al

Details
UK - A special live outside broadcast of the hit BBC1 show Strictly Come Dancing was transmitted from the Blackpool Tower Ballroom on Saturday 20 November. The BBC1 show moved out of TV centre and came back to the recognized home of ballroom dancing.

Lighting director Mark Kenyon working alongside a six-man crew from ELP created a visually stunning show. The opulent architecture and lavish décor of the ballroom were accentuated by a combination of moving lights, conventional six-lamp bars and modern LED systems. The lighting equipment, provided by ELP, included 44 assorted ETC Source Four profiles, 30 High End Studio Colors, 28 Thomas Par 64 chrome floorcans, 18 Par 64 six-lamp bars, 72 Pulsar ChromaStrips, 23 Martin MAC 2000s, 12 MAC 500s and 11 Arri Junior Fresnels. Control was from Compulite - a Spark desk for the generic systems and a Sabre for the moving lights - while all dimmi

Details
USA - Cartier New York's famous store is even more resplendent with jewels this year, following a ground-breaking LED installation. Cartier's spectacular 2004/05 festive lighting scheme includes several bespoke LED features designed and specified by London-based Metropolis Group, and manufactured in its Welsh facility.

At the core of the display are two giant LED tiaras - one 5ft tall and 18ft long, the other 5ft by 16 ft - rigged above the building's two public entrances on 5th Avenue and 52nd Street. Half way up the building is a 14ft-wide LED bow, joining two pieces of red 'ribbon' which wrap the entire building. Containing over 17,000 LEDs, the scenic tiaras and the bow were built by Met3, Metropolis' Swansea-based LED manufacturing operation.

Metropolis US, headed by Richard Ancas, was initially approached about the project by Patrick Benasillo, VP of Visual Graphics Services (

Details
UK - Forge Europa has introduced a new range of SPLEDs for use in a range of illumination applications including backlighting and filament bulbs replacement. SPlined LEDs - SPLEDs for short - are LED bulb replacements which can be used without a printed circuit board. The contours of the LED just push into a pre-drilled hole with a secure friction fit, and insulation displacement connectors make interconnection easy.

Suitable for assembly into all types of vac form and plastic fascias they are quick to assemble, making them suited to short production runs and applications requiring fast progression from development to manufacture.

SPLEDs can stand-alone or march together in extended strips to provide unique scope for the creative lighting design engineer. They provide a very wide viewing angle of 120°, and diode protection ensures that they can survive harsh environments. Si

Details
Rosco showed a prototype of a new theatrical lighting unit, designed by Dialight Corporation, and powered by a solid-state LED engine array. This is the first solid-state instrument to offer the advantages of a hard-edge beam, shutters, and sharp gobo projection capabilities with specifiable, repeatable Roso colours matched to the Roscolux and E-Color swatch books. Also new from Rosco are the PSU-400 and PSU-200 power supply units, which are compatible with nearly all the colour scrollers, gobo rotators, and other accessory devices in common use. For large-scale fog uses, the Delta 6000 fog machine, which consumes more than nine litres of fog fluid an hour, provides service to very large stages, theme parks, and other big venues. The X-Effects projector utilizes a 200W enhanced-metal arc source, whose short arc allows for an output of 5,000 lumens, and a 2,000-hour lamp life. The colour

Details
UK - A.C. Lighting has supplied theatre equipment to The Broadway and Artsdepot newly fitted theatres in London. The company won competitive tenders after being approached by Roger Fox of Theatreplan Consultants (The Broadway) and Chris Baldwin of ACT Consultants (Artsdepot).

The Broadway is Barking and Dagenham's newly re-developed live performance arts venue, presenting a mixed programme of high quality, professional music, dance, drama, comedy, children's and family shows. Tim Foster Architects were commissioned to re-design the original Broadway as part of a regeneration programme of the town's city centre. The new 950 capacity venue opens its doors this Christmas with Dick Whittington and his Kool Kat - an updated version of the London classic.

The Broadway's lighting rig, which includes several products from A.C.'s exclusive product range, comprises of Chroma-Q sc

Details
Digital Art System's newest product was the Easy Stand Alone Ethernet DMX-512 interface (IP version). This product makes it possible to work either locally or via the Internet. The interface can establish a connection to a server and look for any new updates. The lighting designer only needs to put a new show on the server and the interface will download it at the next connection. The interface can be connected to a WebCam, allowing the installer to update a design and see the changes in real time. The product took a PLASA Award for Innovation at this year's PLASA Show.

Details
The new DL2 is the latest in High End's line of digital lighting. The DL2 combines intelligent lighting with digital video and wireless DMX control to give designers the ultimate in flexibility. The DL2 has an internal, Windows-based media server that features rotation and movement synchronization and movie playback synchronization between units. High End also premiered the new Axon V2, a WindowsXP-based media server. The Axon V2 features movie playback synchronization between multiple Axon V2s and the DL2, rotation synchronization of X, Y and Z axes, as well as montage edge blending, remote configuration and tiling with different viewpoints. Axon V2 is applicable for use with soft LED curtains, plasma monitors, LED displays, LCD/DLP projectors and High End's own DL1 as well. Catalyst, High End's premier media server, is now currently available in three software-only versions to meet a

Details
ETC's stand had hints of decadence with a huge baroque proscenium arch set into it, displaying the company's sine wave dimmers in the 'back stage' whilst control and lighting equipment was mainly displayed in the resulting 'FOH' areas. The stand also naturally echoed the company's Hopper-inspired headquarters unveiled in June this year. ETC launched its Smartfade products onto the American market, the newest addition to its Smart Solutions compact lighting control range. Designed to give users at all skill levels the tools to program a lighting show, SmartFade has three operating modes:

Two-Scene, Normal, and DMX Backup. There's no learning curve for novice or first-time users: the simple two-scene mode provides a concise, easy-to-operate 12- or 24-channel, two-scene preset console with a manual or timed crossfade section, bump buttons with master and a grand master. The Normal mode i

Details
Goddard Design Co, responsible for the Lil'DMXter amongst other products, has developed an interesting software accessory for the LDs or board ops - the Virtual Magic Sheet. Now, instead of having pages of channel lists on the monitors, you can display them on the screen as a graphical representation of the lighting plan. Creating a live Magic Sheet at the designer's production desk or on a laptop computer anywhere in the theatre, it's driven via a Wi-Fi link to the DMX output of any control system. Channel numbers can be placed anywhere on the screen with a simple drag-and-drop interface; labels and arrows and other graphic shapes can then be added to organize the drawing. You can then plug in any console's DMX data stream and watch your plan come to life! Everything from intensity, to colour - at last a simple tool that offers the designer the ability to view lighting control data on h

Details
Andy Graves was on hand at Pulsar to demonstrate the company's increasingly wide range of LED fixtures, which are finding their way into more and more applications - including club and bar installations, architectural lighting, and television and stage environments. The range was recently enhanced with the addition of a range of 17 decorative MR16-sized fittings for interior design applications. The fittings are based around the ChromaMR16 Heart, which has 18 high-power LEDs and is supplied with 3m of lightweight ChromaFlex cable. Other recent additions from Pulsar include the ChromaBatten200 and ChromaFlood200 - both 200W fixtures rated IP65 for exterior use.

Details
Holowalls' stand was one of the most eye-catching at the show: the refracted colours generated by these films is highly effective - especially when demonstrated with the aid of a Martin Atomic Strobe!

Details
Compulite was showing its Vector lighting control series, offering advanced console design for handling conventional and automated fixtures, dual processor design for high performance and stability, a familiar Windows XP environment, VX Works real-time operating system, and an interactive toolbar for rapid programming. The Vector comes in three colours (Red, Green, and Blue), each of which has specific capabilities.

Details
Enttec, the Australian manufacturer whose Datagate was a nominee at the PLASA Show's Awards for Innovation this year, was also at LDI. The company's Nicolas Moreau reports that the response to Datagate has been good since PLASA. Sharing the company's stand at LDI was another Antipodean lighting innovator, Martin Searancke, who demonstrated his Light Factory PC-based lighting control software. His motivation in developing this system was a realization that most software on the market tended to cater for moving lights; he was also conscious, he explains, of other packages' poor use of 'screen real estate'. Light Factory, he says, is "a no-compromise approach of traditional dimmer control and fully featured moving light support". Introduced just one year ago, Light Factory is now in its third version and has established a respectable core of users in that time.

Details
Vari-Lite introduced its new VL2500 spot and wash lights, however it was the VL3500Q that was one of the stars of the show. Even the normally understated Philip Norfolk became animated when it came to discussing this fixture: with 50% audible reduction in noise output from the standard VL3500, it is ideal for theatre use, perhaps even FOH. It has an incredibly even field of intensity and very fast colour mixing potential: however, the shutter system must truly be the highlight of this fixture, with a nine-motor system it can go incredibly small and still remain very sharp - and the shape is totally repeatable.

Details
With media servers being one of the buzz words at the show, TMB was showcasing the Hippotizer range from Green Hippo, which received much attention at PLASA this year. In addition, G-Lec announced the appointment of TMB as its exclusive sales partner in North America and launched its first for-sale unit, the LightFrame. The TMB stand was also the base for the men of Carallon, namely Nick Archdale and Richard Mead, the former Flying Pigs who have been keeping themselves busy since leaving the High End Systems fold earlier in 2004. Their new Pharos solid state architectural controller was receiving an excellent response at LDI, Mead told us. The system offers a cost-effective solution for controlling entertainment and LED lighting in architectural environments. Pharos offers real-time control of playback selection and lighting levels; playback of scenes, sequences, effects video clips and

Details
At A.C.T. Lighting the folks from MA Lighting (distributed in the US by A.C.T) were on hand to explain the latest refinements and additions to the grandMA console. The grandMA version 5.3 features a full blind editor, which works parallel to the live programmer. In addition, the console now supports WYSIWYG autofocus functionality via Ethernet directly. Keeping up with the times, MA has released the grandMAVideo, a new media-server application for all grandMA consoles, and coming soon is dimMA sine-wave, a new module with IGBT technology; the dimMA sine-wave modules will feature 4x3 kVA and 2x6kVA dimmer channels and will be based on pulse-width modulation with 40 kHz for extremely smooth waveforms. Also distributed by A.C.T. is the Frog 2 console from Zero 88. In this edition of the Frog line, there are no restrictions imposed by the hardware design. Multiple playback, user-definable co

Details
Jireh Supplies Inc announced that it is now the exclusive North American distributor for The Effects Company from the UK, and proudly showcased the full product range on stand. There were also live demonstrations of the spectacular CO2 Jet system and Cirrus Lowsmoke. Gene Byce, of Jireh Supplies was very excited about the potential of all The Effects Company's products, particularly their quality and ease of use.

Details
Less than a month after PLASA, Artistic Licence had even more new innovations on its stand. The latest product is Visual Patch - a fabulous invention for those using lots of fixtures with plenty of channels per fixture. Combining RDM protocol, a lighting console and a video camera, the system allows you to simply point the camera at the stage and press the Visual Patch button. The console then uses RDM to turn each lamp on, analyzes the position, shape and size of the lamp via the video camera, adds it to the patch and automatically sets the lamp start address, solving that dreadful problem of complex number crunching when patching. Soon it'll be possible to forget the boring numbers bit for good!

Details
GE Lighting had several additions to its Showbiz line of bulbs. The Showbiz CSR800/SE/HR lamp is designed for film production settings, the result of a close collaboration with Mole-Richardson. A series of four CSR metal-halide lamps, the CSR400/S/DE, CSR575/S/DE, CSR700/S/DE, and CSR/1200/S/DE are designed for use in moving lights. The 80W F80BX/Cinera Plus 32 and 36W F36BX/Cinema Plays 32 are designed for indoor film shoots using 3,200° Kelvin tungsten lamps. The CHM150/PAR56 lamp is designed for architectural and retail applications.
  1. Lee Filters
  2. Robert Juliat
  3. Osram
  4. Apollo Design
  5. Lycian
  6. PRG
Page 606 of 1188
LSi 40th sponsors - Large MPU - July-Aug

Latest Issue. . .