Page 1
September 2008
www.lsionline.co.uk
entertainment, presentation, communication
PLASA08 Preview - Pt. 2
What you should look out for at Earls Court
Opera for the 21st Century
L&SI visits Oslo Opera House
Festival d’Avignon
France’s major performing arts festival
Technical Focus
A round-up of the DSP systems market
Going Places
L&SI talks to LSC Lighting & Carallon
Euro 2008
Meyer Sound fields a winning
team in Austria & Switzerland
L&SI has gone digital! Register online FREE at www.lsionline.co.uk/digital
Page 2
Classic Gear:
EvenLED
Rob Halliday takes a nostalgic but instructive look back at the tools that have shaped the industry . . .
A little different this time: a product you’ve probably
never heard of. But classics are products that change
the game, and this one does. Think of it as a future
classic: EvenLED.
A casual glance would probably peg it as a modular
videowall: a 1m square tile housing a 4 x 4 grid of
LEDs. Like those products, it is designed to be easily
built into arrays: tiles click, then lock together vertically
from single hanging points. Metal clips link the handles
of adjacent columns, loosely to allow an EvenLED wall
to flex, move and find its level if not flown completely
straight. Power and DMX daisy-chain through the units,
which self-address on power-up.
But this is not a videowall: it is something quite different,
expressly designed to do one thing very well: light a cyclorama. Videowall
products have a relatively narrow beam angle, designed to be viewed from
a distance. EvenLED’s LEDs are super-wide; the spec sheets don’t quote
the beam angle, but it must be 120° or so. Build a set of tiles just 25cm
behind a suitable back projection material and you’ll get bright, completely
even coverage of the screen with the individual sources invisible, the tile’s
white front surface acting as a bounce cloth and ensuring no light is
wasted. The colour range available is remarkable - all the more so when
you realise that the product is just using red, green and blue LEDs - from
greys and tints, warms and cools through to saturated reds and blues.
But you’re not limited to single colour looks and dissolves between them.
If you want it - and you do want it - you have individual control over each
three-colour pixel. Now, anything is possible. Graduations. Wipes.
smoothness isn’t compromised by the limitations of DMX - even if it
does make a big wall somewhat DMX-hungry.
Designed by Brother, Brother & Sons in Denmark, every detail seems
thought out - should a tile fail, the central section, electronics and LEDs,
just hinges back and lifts out of the outer rigging frame. It’s silent.
And it has quite the green credentials, using a fraction of the power of
traditional cyc-lighting solutions and without the need to change lamps
or constantly replace burnt-out colour. Plus, of course, you never need
to waste any time focusing it!
Once you’ve used it, it becomes quite hard to go back to lighting a cyc
any other way . . .
EvenLED
>>>
www.brothers-sons.dk/prod_evenled.htm
Rainbows. Abstract patterns. Pictures - if your control
system allows, just dump a sunset photo onto the
EvenLED and you have an instant sunset; make
a picture of clouds scroll sideways - instant clouds. Or if
you have a complex painted cloth, use a picture of it
and it will immediately be the best-lit you’ve ever seen it.
And the real, remarkable breakthrough is the fading.
LEDs have traditionally suffered from near-subliminal
flickering, steppy fading and that horrible, horrible
switch from off to on and on to off: this would be very
unpleasant on an enormous cyc filling the entire back
of a stage. EvenLED does none of these, with an
incredibly smooth transition from off to on then all the
way up, and with 16-bit control ensuring that
••••••
classicgear
Lighting&Sound
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September 2008
www.lsionline.co.uk
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