With PLASA providing a much needed fillip to the business, the question everyone wanted answering about LDI was whether it could pick up the baton and continue where PLASA left off. Well the jury’s marginally out on that one - certainly, the first day got off to a blistering start, but there were definitely times when things felt quiet on the show floor. That said, all the exhibitors I spoke to reported good levels of business and that’s the only yardstick a trade show should be measured by.
Much of the product on display had already made its presence felt at PLASA, but there were some real innovations and some noticeable trends. The undiminished homage to all things LED continues, to the point where Ellen Lampert-Greaux, part of the LDI team, was volunteering a rename of the show to LEDDI. Acolyte’s small lanyard LED flashlights stole the show for me and pretty quickly became a collector’s item.
Lighting being the mainstay of the show, there was plenty of news and plenty of new product.
Not only has A. C. Lighting added audio to its already sizeable inventory, but in a move that will presumably give it greater control, it’s acquired an interest in Spectrum Manufacturing Inc, the Canadian company responsible for the manufacture of the Chroma-Q range, for which A.C. is the exclusive distributor.
A.C.T Lighting (formerly A.C. Lighting Inc) was there under its new identity. Garnered under its wing were Artistic Licence, Jands, MA Lighting and Zero 88, all of which are covered under their own headings.
With its new range of Axis fixtures, ADB has succeeded in reinventing the wheel - or in this instance, the profile spot. Axis provides the crossover between manual and motorized positioning and focusing, neatly solving many of the problems encountered by lighting technicians on a daily basis. Its functionality comes in the patented control of the luminaire shutters, focus and zoom settings. These functions are connected to ring controls around the luminaire’s exterior, which are accessible regardless of rigging angle. The design also allows the standard trunion arm to be replaced with a motorized yoke, which links to the ring controls, to provide remote pan and tilt control. Whilst Axis has been grabbing the headlines, other ADB products have also been revisited: the company’s flagship Phoenix 10 now has an extended front panel, including a powerful motion control module organized around a multi-function LCD touch screen, and there have been upgrades to the ISIS software.
The floodgates on LED were pushed further open by Altman. Under the name Spectra, it has grouped a range of LED products - Spectra-Par (a 540 LED colour mixing Par), Spectra-Strip (a colour mixing LED border light), Spectra-Splash (a 540 LED colour mixing outdoor Par), and Uni-LED (a 252 LED monochrome Par). In designing the range, Altman has taken its existing fixture bodies, and matched them with a new heat management system which is intelligent enough to dim the LEDs should things get too warm and, just in case you weren’t convinced by the sales patter, out came a hairdryer to ably demonstrate the point. Altman also had a new outdoor ellipsoidal, available in both quartz and CDM versions.
American DJ launched the Pod Series - a range of moonflower lighting effects, that includes the ActivePod, ColorPod, RotoPod and LunarPod. Living up to their name, the Pods feature a new, high-tech plastic case design that makes them resemble space pods from a campy science-fiction movie.
The team from Apollo, meanwhile, has re-engineered its ComSpec II colour scroller so that it now has an increased aperture size, a built-in heat blocker to extend the life of the gels and two-mode operation.
LDI provided a good opportunity for AVR-USA, a joint venture between Marcel Fairbairn’s recently est
