Rosco always has stuff that people buy, this is a given.  I was most interested this year in seeing the DMX Iris.  I posted about this a while back, but I was able to get some pics of the DMX Iris unit up close this year.  I also snapped the dual rotator and the single rotator.  I love Rosco’s dual rotator.  I just love it.

Also, funny enough, under each of these is the Rosco Lite Pad.  Hah.  Excellent way to promote two products at once, Rosco!

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Part of designing a lighting package for anything outdoors is worrying about how the fixtures will be affected by the elements.  Typically the answer to that theoretical question is “drastically,” especially if you’re dealing with automated fixtures.  At LDI I ran across a company called Tempest Lighting that manufactures a bunch of enclosures for fixtures and projectors.  These enclosures look every bit as awesome as some of the “sleep pods” in movies like Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Check them out:

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Behold:  The City Theatrical DMX Iris and DMX Projector Douser.

City Theatrical in all of their greatness has released a DMX controlled iris for all of your irising needs.  It runs off of a 24VDC power supply, like your typical Forerunner II or Chroma Q PSU for scrollers, with a 4-pin cable, just like scroller cable.  Do you think that maybe the unit is meant to best utilize your existing power supplies and scroller cable?  Way to go, City Theatrical!  The DMX Iris is available for both Strand SL’s and ETC Sourcde Fours.

It’s $775 right now, and if you have Source Four Zooms, don’t buy.  It won’t fit!

The City Theatrical Projector Douser is also $775, and is powerable via your 24VDC Chroma Q, Forerunner, etc scroller PSUs.  It’s basically a flapper on a servo motor.  I used one of these a few months ago on a production of Urinetown!  The Musical to douse a projector front-of-house.  Worked like a charm.

I posted an article about the SeaChanger color engine for ETC Source Four Profiles a few days ago, and I wanted to post about one of the other accessories that is available from SeaChanger - the SeaChanger Wash Color Engine.

All you need for this accessory is the lamp base housing - that’s what makes it awesome.  The SeaChanger Wash Color Engine basically turns the Source Four lamp housing into a color mixing fresnel, with all of the same dichroic guts as the Profile color engine.  The wash barrel on the unit has a 20° to 70° zoomable beam spread, which again turns this unit into a little bit of awesome.

The next show that I spec these on, I will take a lot of pictures of the unit.  In the mean time, check out SeaChanger’s product page on this device.

If you’ve ever tried to mix deep primaries with color filters, then you know how much of a pain in the rear it can be - until the SeaChanger came along.  The SeaChanger color engine is a device that modifies your Source Four ERS units into color changing spot fixtures with CMY/G mixing capabilities.

CMY/G, you say?  Yeah.  Green.  Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and a patented “Extreme Green” dichroic that adds the ability to mix deep hues, add subtleties to colors, and create looks that aren’t possible with color scrollers and faders.  Dichroic filters are utilized inside the unit, which are glass, so the colors don’t fade - and the need for cooling fans doesn’t exist, so the unit is silent as well.

SeaChangers are capable of all of the standard ETC beam spaing tools as well, so you can add gobos, irises, gobo rotators, gobo changers, etc to the unit.

Check out the product page.  I’ve used these only a few times, but every time I discover something else I love about them.