Latest Technology in Entertainment Lighting

         Moving Yokes, Diode Lasers & LED technology

        We've come a long way since mirror balls & pin-lights!

                                                By Don Flora

Intelligent Lighting

The entertainment & theatrical lighting industry has really changed in the past 10-20 years. Back in the late 70's, when nightclubs were called Discothèques the latest technology was maybe a mirror ball, a few gelled pin-spots perhaps a UFO or other spinning effects. Theatrical lighting consisted of basic fresnels, ellipsoidal, scoops and par cans on dimmers.

It stayed like that until the 1980's when Italian manufacturers created the intelligent moving mirror luminaire. This was basically a projector with a bright metal-halide lamp, an internal color wheel of dichoric glass filters, a gobo wheel and a moving servo head with a mirror attached. Internal electronics moved the color wheel, gobos and mirror to commands from an external controller.

Clay Paky was of the first companies to introduce the intelligent luminaire with the "Golden Scan©". Later others such as Coemar, Blackstone (now known as Lightwave Research/Highend Systems) Vari-Lite and Martin developed their versions. In the 90's there were over 25 different companies producing similar products. Some used their own control language and later and more universal code known as DMX-512 was adopted.

Along with moving mirror luminaires, many manufacturers introduced other effects with the same technology. The industry needed color changers to replace par cans and scrollers. Thus products such as the Martin RoboColor© was introduced and the Lightwave Research  ColorPro© as well as many others. These fixtures could wash a stage or dance floor with indexed colors of many choices although they did not move.

Eventually and recently, engineers became more innovative and developed fixtures that would do more and perform faster. "CMY" color mixing became available that could produce about any color in the spectrum by use of (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow). Full 0-100% dimming was also now available as well as fixtures with an iris. The moving mirror was fast but unfortunately it was restricted to only 180 degrees of movement.

Companies such as Vari-Lite developed one of the first "moving-yoke" luminaires. These fixtures can move 360 degrees horizontally and 180 degrees vertically. The only drawback is they are not as fast as the moving mirrors. However, now the industry has made a shift to the production of these fixture types and are slowing eliminating moving mirrors. Most manufacturers have two types of moving yokes available, Profiles (spots) and Wash. The profile model usually has many gobos and colors available as well as rotating gobos and prisms and more "hard-edge" focal imaging. Wash fixtures usually have a diffused lens like a fresnel with more "soft-edge" flood or wash focal imaging. The wash fixture has also seemed to replace the stationary color changers. A variety of lamps are also available from the new archstream 150, MSD-250, HMI-575, HMI-1200 and MSR-1200

                                                     Moving Yoke Luminaire

Lasers

Who would have ever imagined 30 years ago of using a laser for entertainment lighting? Actually lasers have been around a long time in the entertainment industry although never really affordable or practical for the everyday nightclub or theatre. Laser Media of LA was one of the first companies in the early 80's to "take the laser on the road".

The first ones were water-cooled argon and neon gas lasers with proprietary control systems. They were very expensive from $75K to $100K. Anything over 4.9 Mw required a variance (FDA exception or permission) to operate. At this time lasers were used more in the medical field and for industrial cutting than for light shows.

In the 90's the introduction of the "solid state" and "diode-pumped" lasers appeared which allowed for higher wattage and better efficiency. The first solid state lasers were low wattage (4.9 Mw). These lasers were also more economical to produce and some did not require water cooling. Companies such as SumaStar and Eclipse were some of the first to produce these laser types. A few years later, companies such as MoboLaser and Lowell Development developed laser effects by utilizing higher wattage diode lasers from manufacturers such as Melles Griote and Coherent together with a scanner systems of special optics, mirrors and control systems to create one of the first economical multi-beam effect. Some have adjustable "servo" heads to which direct the  laser beam into each head for independent and individual beams.

                                  Laser Scanner

Now these lasers that once cost $75K are available as low as $9,000 for a 50 to 100 milli-watt and $35K for a 1 or 3 watt laser. They are also controllable via DMX512 or by other software companies such as "Pangolin" and feature such amazing effects such as "Liquid sky".

LED Technology

Now companies such as Color Kinetics and Pixeon have developed the latest in entertainment and architectural lighting. This is the new LED technology that requires no high wattage lamps!

Can you imagine a bright light source that can illuminate similar to a par can with absolutely no lamp? No heat (well very little) and safe (no big power source). This is definitely the best investment for those using lamps for long hours, days and months.

Color Kinetics first introduced ColorScape, the world's first line of digital color changing lighting especially for pools and spas. These products are controlled to provide colored light and dynamic color changing lighting effects via the Chromacore digital lighting technology, which utilizes microprocessor-controlled, multi-colored LEDs (light emitting diodes) to generate colored light and lighting effects. The first products in the ColorScape Series are ColorScape 7 and ColorScape 22, both digital color changing retrofit lamps for spas and above ground pools.

While the ColorScape products aim more at the architectual market, Color Kinetics is well known in the professional lighting industry providing their LED-based lighting constructions for various applications ranging from colored walls in bars, hotels or discos to road shows with limited truss-space or shop illumination.

          ColorScape         Color Stream™

Pixeon has developed Color Stream™ - a dynamic LED lighting effect. What if neon had pixels? Imagine being able to change color, create patterns, and move them along a tube. Instead of neon, an array of LEDs fills each tube. It looks like neon or fiber optics, yet it does much more.

Color Stream instantly comes to life with flowing, ebbing streams of colored light. Custom patterns run automatically or are triggered from existing control systems. Visual effects that were previously impossible are now simple to create and control via DMX-512

These products are among the latest technology being introduced today by lighting designers and consultants. Just think what’s coming up in the next few years?

Which type of automated fixture is right for your club or venue ?

By Richard Cadena

Ten years is a long time in lighting technology years. In 1991, if you were looking for automated lighting you had little choice but to buy moving mirror fixtures. There were a few clubs with deep pockets that could afford moving yoke fixtures, but they were few and far between. Mistral’s in Dallas, in which Stevie Nicks was a partner, and the Palladium in New York City both had Vari*lite VL-1 fixtures – the same fixtures that launched the moving light business. But they had to lease them because at the time Vari*lite did not sell any lighting; they only did long term leases.

Today, when you go to a lighting trade show like LDI or even NAMM, you could go blind looking at all the moving yoke fixture offerings. There are a passel of new moving yoke fixtures, especially of the 250-watt variety, including fixtures from Coemar, High End, Martin Professional, Omnisistem, Technilux, Futurelight, and more. Now the question has changed from which type of moving mirror fixture to buy, to whether to buy a moving mirror fixture or a moving yoke fixture. Then you get to decide which brand.

Moving yoke fixtures are very popular at the moment. They are the royal family of club lighting. They aren’t so common as moving mirror fixtures. But if royalty isn’t your cup of tea, then you might want to stick with the street rods of club lighting, moving mirror fixtures, which are more akin to NASCAR than Buckingham Palace.

Let’s take them both for a spin and see how they respond.

No NASCAR, But ...

Right out of the starting blocks, the moving mirror fixture is much quicker than a moving yoke fixture. Typically, they can pan from zero to 180 degrees in about 0.5 seconds. They have much less mass to move than a moving yoke fixture, and one would expect that they could burn up the straight aways and leave a yoke in the dust.

A moving yoke fixture, on the other hand, is no NASCAR. It can go from zero to 180 degrees in about one second – about half as fast as its mirrored cousin. It has much more mass to move, and has to ramp up to speed and then ramp down so it doesn’t overshoot its target destination.

That’s why mirror fixtures are popular for raves, disco, and whatever they’re calling speed metal these days. Mirrors are the high-energy go-to light for all your party needs. But that’s not to say that moving yokes are reserved for the Kenny G set. No, no, no! In fact, a good programmer can coax lots of energy from the fixtures without so much as moving the yokes. It can be done with fast strobing, fast shutter chases, color chases, and lots of other cool tricks that defy description.

But the moving yoke fixture has something going for it that the mirrored fixture doesn’t. Not only can it go 180 degrees, but it can go further. A lot further. These days the average yoke fixture can pan more than 360 degrees and beyond – often up to 540 degrees. (For you XFL fans, that’s one and a half revolutions.) Most mirror fixtures can only pan 180 degrees, and some can’t even pan that far. That makes moving yoke fixtures ideal for long flowing sweeps, forward and rear projections, and the type of fly away effects that chill your spine. They can be very dramatic.

Yoke Benefits

A moving yoke fixture generally has a very low profile and is better suited for lower ceilings than mirrors. A moving mirror fixture is generally larger and hangs lower than a yoke of the same size lamp source. Most of them have a feature called position encoding, which enables the fixture to find its position automatically after it has been bumped or repositioned. You can actually move the head while it’s stationary or grab it while it’s moving and it will go back to the position it’s supposed to be in without harming the fixture. With a mirror fixture, if you move the mirror manually it stays out of position until the fixture is re-homed or reset.

Yoke fixtures are also new enough that most of them have the latest technology and hardware. Electronic switching power supplies are making fixtures smaller, lighter, brighter, and much easier to install and maintain. If you have to take one down from the ceiling for repair – and you will whether it’s a moving yoke or a moving mirror – it’s not as much of a chore. And since most moving yoke fixtures are not cheap, they tend to have good quality components like achromatic lenses, anti-reflective coated glass, and glass gobos.

Easy Versus Experimental

Yoke fixtures have the added feature of moving heads. To see a group of fixtures moving in unison is an effect in itself, not unlike a synchronized swim team. Even when there’s no beam emanating from the fixture, there is still a show going on. Moving mirrors have all but lost their mystique. Chances are, most people are well familiar with the concept and have seen them since they went to Sesame Street Live as a kid. Moving heads, on the other hand, are normally seen in big concerts with musicians the audience idolizes. It’s a rock star fixture.

On the other hand, moving mirror fixtures, with their magnetic power supplies, stepper motors and circuits, and fixed focus optics have been around for a decade or more and are proven reliable and ready to rock. There’s not much innovation in most of them, but there’s also not much experimentation either. They are generally easy to repair and the parts are fairly common and easy to get hold of. Most lighting techs know how to fix them and there are lots of places to have them worked on.

Ten years from now, I think the new generation of Cyborg scanners will synthesize human neurophysiology and biomechanics with robotic hardware and software. For now, all we have to choose from is NASCAR or Bucking-ham Palace.