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March 2016 entertainment, presentation, installation

www.lsionline.co.uk

Birmingham HippodromeOne theatre’s steps toward a greener future . . .

Also Inside:

On Tour: All Time LowWith Good Charlotte in support

On Tour: MusePushing boundaries with Drones

Review: ISE 2016Highlights from Amsterdam

Technical FocusRosco’s Cube reviewed

PLUS: Poland’s CKK Jordanki • Funktion-One’s Vero • Preview: Prolight+Sound, FrankfurtShow Review: NAMM • Portsmouth’s New Theatre Royal • Detroit Motor Show . . . and more!

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Colour is the new frontier in lighting control,because LED fixtures - particularly complexfixtures with multiple colour sources - havemade it challenging to control (when you havemore emitters in your light than encoders onyour console you need to take a differentapproach to just dialling in colour) and morechallenging to understand - since it turns outthat while we’ve always used colour inlighting, we often haven’t truly understood it.

The best of the current consoles are nowhelping us by providing calibrated tools thattake away the need to understand. Instead, attheir simplest, we can just pick a familiar colourname from a carefully pre-defined colour libraryand have that exact colour delivered on stage.The first time you experience this is a revelatorymoment . . . but, as with so much that isinnovative and ‘new’, this turns out not to be sonew after all: it existed pre-World War II inStrand’s Chromolux controller.

Chromolux is basically a colour library systemfor the pre-digital age. The ‘user interface’ is a front panel presenting you with multipleselectors, one for each zone of lighting in yoursystem. Each is surrounded by a range ofcolours, half of them tints, half stronger colours,all the names comfortable, friendly, easilyunderstood - ‘sky blue’, ‘sunset’, ‘dawn’,‘salmon’, ‘rose’. Some reflect the difficulties of

naming colours we still find today when storingcolour palettes, with both ‘dark blue’ and ‘deepblue’ featured. Turn the dial to a colour and thelighting would cross-fade to that colour. Simple.Perfect for venues that wanted the magic ofshifting colour but didn’t have staff skilled at, orinterested in, operating a conventional lightingcontrol - cinemas, ballrooms, exhibitions, icerinks. When more excitement was needed, a toggle switch would let the Chromolux cyclethrough either soft tints or strong hues; a second would select static or changingcolours, or fade all the lights out.

Remarkably, some of the colour names featuredare eerily prescient for our new world of LEDlighting: ‘warm white’ and even ‘lime green’featured in some systems. But of courseChromolux predated this technology bydecades. The colour mixing was achieved usingtungsten lights, set with pre-defined colours(usually either the three primary or threesecondary colours) by Strand, so that theyknew, and so could pre-define in the controller,the precise mix required to create each colour.The colour names around the dials differeddepending on which colour set was chosen -‘red’ vs ‘orange’.

The lights were driven to these levels byStrand’s familiar motor-driven, magnetic-clutchoperated dimmer racks. The connection

between controller and dimmers was just a low-voltage multicore, allowing the Chromoluxpanel to be positioned where most convenient.

Chromolux predicted the future in one otherway: Strand weren’t the only company active inthis market for simple colour controls, and thecontroller ended up in the subject of a courtcase between Strand and Holophane, the latteralleging patent infringement and ending up witha deal whereby Strand made Chromolux butHolophane sold it.

This kind of easy colour control is now, ofcourse, easy to replicate in software - but thatdoesn’t have quite the satisfying clunk of thosebig old Chromolux dials . . .

Chromolux Brochure: > //plasa.me/cukng

And how the colours could have been made:> //plasa.me/rljb1

Classic Gear: Strand ChromoluxRob Halliday takes a nostalgic but instructive look back at the tools that have shaped the industry . . .

Ready for the future

Unrivalled products since 1991

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