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Vortex choose new Martin Laser for the Sage Gateshead
Vortex Lighting rose to the challenge of producing something a bit more dynamic to add to the lighting of the Royal Television Society Awards (North Eastern Region) at The Sage, Gateshead at the end of January. They decided to use the new Martin 1.6 RGB Laser to project the logo of the RTS, which then ‘morphed’ into the logo of The Sage at the entrance to the ceremony.
Graeme Sewell, director of Vortex Lighting Ltd, said: “We are proud to be the first company in the UK to have the new Martin Laser available for hire.”
Vortex had been contemplating the purchase of a Laser for at least a couple of years but took the decision to wait until the technology had developed before investing.
Graeme explained the background to his decision: "There are quite a number of products on the market now and a few of them have some good features, but we wanted a quality piece of kit from a respected manufacturer with all the relevant safety features and approvals. When the Martin Laser came along it ticked all the right boxes.”
Graeme also commented: “It is also reassuring to know that this product is made in Europe and comes with a two-year / 3000 hour warranty. We have been a Martin dealer for more than 12 years and our hire stock covers the range from the latest MAC 250s right up to MAC 2000s so it made good sense to add the Martin Laser to the fleet."
The Laser performed well on its first hire at the Northeast's most prestigious music venue, The Sage Gateshead on the bank of the river Tyne. The Laser was operated by the head of technical operations at The Sage, Chris Durant, who was very keen to hire it once we had arranged a demo at his venue. Chris was very pleased with the way the Laser performed on the evening in an area that had a reasonable amount of ambient light.
Lasers of this physical size have been traditionally used in darkened or completely blacked out rooms and it's fair to say that most of the technical people in attendance at the event were surprised that such a small unit had the power to project such a bright and almost flicker free image. The Laser was occasionally overlaid on images projected by a Barco R12+ (powered by a 2200W xenon lamp); and Graeme summed up that: “it cut through beautifully even though it drew just 0.7 Amps. It isn't that many years since a Laser of this intensity would have needed a large three phase power supply and water cooling, not to mention a couple of people to lift it.” Graeme explained that with the Martin unit being no bigger than a haze machine, “it is just so easy to rig and it uses so little power you could actually run it off the cigarette lighter in a car (via an inverter of course!).”
“The Martin unit is full colour RGB, not just boring single colour like in the old days, and the blue in particular is so deep and rich it is probably the best I've seen from a Laser. Add to that the fact that you can upload 432 cues or animations into the Laser itself from a laptop, (either using custom images or some of the large selection provided in the Martin software), and then trigger them via any DMX controller and you start to believe what Martin say about ‘Laser made easy’!’.”
12th February 2007
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