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Heading down Olympia Way, leaving the sun-kissed streets of Kensington in my wake, the dull thump of bass catches my attention, and for a split second I get the feeling I have been transported back to another time and place – to the Chunnel club’s ‘Sunnyside up’, a banging event where the music started in the morning and carried on all day. Checking with some of my friends working in the film industry to see if they were coming down, ‘no pro audio things there’ they said; ‘well it looks pretty professional to me’ I remarked, illustrating the point that I really didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. This should be fun.
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Plasa, September 2022. An international bonanza of entertainment technology for those in the world of Theatre, Concerts, Events, and, I hoped, Architectural Lighting. Obviously, the applications that this Fair caters for lie on the periphery of our industry, and I was keen to see if there was anything on offer that would be of any interest. In short is it worth the visit?
Anolis Lighting is the architectural arm of Robe, (Robe is one of the world’s leading entertainment lighting manufacturers producing high quality moving lights and digital lighting products). They had picked three product lines for the show, of which the Ambiane was of most interest. As business development manager (London South East), Ashley Popple told me –‘The Ambiane range are available as pure white, tungsten dim, (with tungsten emulation, from 1000 K to 3200K), tunable white (from 2700K to 4000K) and RGBW. To avoid flicker and any noticeable ‘jumps’ we have what we call our 18 bit dimming. Typically, when you control a DMX fitting, you will have 255 steps. With our 18-bit dimming, effectively each channel uses 2 DMX channels, so you have more steps available, allowing for a smooth cross fade. The control is DMX, DALI or 0-10v (0-10v will not give you so many steps).’
.This range is quite extensive with both pendants and a variety of recessed versions. These are available with a variety of control options and beam widths – RGBW, Pure White, Tunable White and Tungsten Dim, making these products at the high end of any specification spectrum. Tunable colour temperature is essential for tv studios, so I guess that’s where these products come into their own, they would also be suitable for architectural applications where you want to recreate the warmth of a dimmed tungsten lamp, something that is hard to do well, but has been achieved in this range.
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.Next up on the entertainment lighting roller coaster we had SGM, a Danish company specialising in waterproof lighting for the entertainment and architectural industry.
Anthony Van-Sertima (the UK’s business development manager), was kind enough to run me through their new product offering on show for the first time this year, a ‘Wash Light’ although I would really call it a narrow beam spot…. ‘At Plasa this year we are showing our ‘i6’ the newest fixture in our architectural range; a projector giving a 2.3° and optional 3.2°x 3.4° beam angles. This has been specifically designed for long throw applications, such as bridges, towers, statues etc, is RGBW, wireless controllable (DMX and RDM), with a patented dehumidification and active moisture control. This product is quite niche and was developed as we found that particularly over long throws, we were missing that super narrow beam to meet designers’ requirements, with such a narrow beam you also reduce the possibility of light spill.’
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Robert Harding of Cameo Light UK, (owned by Adam Hall group based in Germany) is the product light specialist based here in the UK. They were exhibiting their Zenit W300i product, an evolution of this range, due to the multiple requests for a permanent fixture, as opposed to a product only used for temporary spectacles as in the entertainment sector. As Rob told me: ‘We were asked – challenged I suppose, by our customers telling us that our popular Zenit series is brilliant, but we need it to go onto cruise ships, listed buildings, sea-fronts, that sort of thing; something that is suitable for permanent outdoor use. Identical to what many people in the events industry would know as the W300, (the i stands for the installation version ‘)
The new product is IP67, RGBW, and has a 10,000 lumen output with 16 bit dimming and colour control, it’s also C5M certified (NB: C5M is a durable coating system for a very high corrosive environment. The paint helps the devices to stay corrosion free that are situated in coastal and marine areas with high salinity).
The configuration for this product is done by RDM and carried out using a Zenit remote controller (this differs from the W300 which is controlled on a product mounted screen). One thing that I always look for in this type of product is FLEXIBILITY and glare control, thankfully they developed the W300i with both, as Rob mentions : – ‘We have used the knowledge we gained on the entertainment side to make this product as versatile as possible. Natively out of the box these are 18° beam 35 ° field but a lot of customers want to be able to change the beam angle, we have lenses that allow to users to change the beam angle should the customer require, glare shields are available as accessories.’
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So, in conclusion is Plasa worth a visit by the architectural lighting community?
On the chance that you are looking for an architectural product with a bit of punch, and if you create designs where colour and control is an integral part, I will say it’s a definite yes. You can see it all in a morning if you don’t faff, and you never know, you might find something to inspire.
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