ETC, long the dominant manufacturer of conventional theatrical lighting, has now gotten into the moving-light game. This week, at the trade show PLASA in London, the company debuted the new Source Four Revolution.
The Source Four Revolution
According to ETC CEO Fred Foster, “We decided we were not going to offer a moving light until we could make one with all the qualities of a Source Four.” The Revolution uses an incandescent lamp and the same optics of ETC’s Source Four Zoom. He adds, “We were also determined to make an affordable moving light that was better than anything comparable and one designed specifically for theatrical needs.”
Among its selling points, the Revolution is billed as being the first truly quiet moving light, eliminating the noise of fans and moving parts that have caused so much trouble in theatrical applications. Says Tom Litrell, Revolution’s product manager, “This meant going beyond just eliminating fan noise. Our engineers knew that we would have to make motors run in a new way.” The result is QuietDrive, a mechanism for making motors run quietly.
In addition, the Revolution has an integrated quick-change color scroller. At the same time, the unit is designed to accept M-sized dichroic filters when really vibrant colors are desired.
Among other others, the Revolution also features on-board dimming, so lighting technicians can save their dimmer channels for their other fixtures. It also contains a Internal Media Frame (IMF), which allows users to insert a conventional filter into the beam whenever required. The IMF is shipped with a frost filter for soft beam edges; the automated frame also accepts regular lighting media.
The unit is fitted with a new Quick exchange Lamp (QXL), which incorporates the filament design of the Source Four’s HPL lamp with a new, patented lamp base to allow lamp changes without opening the housing on the fixture and without disturbing any lamp settings and optics.
The unit is also being touted for its modularity. The standard base unit provides pan, tilt, beam-edge change, 16-36 degree zoom range, Internal Media Frame, integrated color scroller, and onboard dimming. Designed into the unit are two module bays; when new features and functionality are needed, users loosen two thrumbscrews and slide in an external module, which makes the addition of indexing gobo wheels, dichroic color filters, an iris, or shutters, into a relatively simple process. For more information about ETC and its products, click here.