I met a cool sibling of a good friend this weekend who is working as a production electrician in New York City.  After breakfast and coffee, we got to chatting about fixtures and favorites and that kind of geek speak.  Martin’s Mac 2000 came up, and where I love the Mac 2K, my friend’s sister did not.  Her complaint was that the Martin line is not a very good product line, and I had to naturally disagree.  The main comparison was to the Vari*Lite line of fixtures - for which I have a special place in my heart.  The optics are great, the output is great, and the fixture is smooth and reliable.  However, as a designer and also someone who has had both hands knee deep in both of these fixture lines, I can’t say that the Mac 2000 is a “crappy” fixture.  I’ve been all over the globe with these fixtures (Mac 2K), and I love them.  I’d probably rather have Vari*Lite fixtures, but if I had nothing but Mac 2K’s available, I still feel like I could design and program a rockin’ show.

What are your thoughts on the Mac 2000?  Profile, Performance, or Wash, whatever model you know.  Please post in the comments, I really want your opinions!  Am I the only person who still values Mac 2000’s?

I was very impressed at the Martin booth - lots of pixel video, the Mac III is still awesome, but I had a hard time getting anyone to talk to me about it.  Lots of people there, I’m sure I didn’t look too important, or at least unimportant by comparison.

It was great to see the Mac III in action!

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LDI had a TON of moving light manufacturers and reps this year - while I was surprised a little, I wasn’t shocked.  A good quantity of the moving lighting booths that weren’t Clay Paky, Coemar, Vari*Lite, Martin, High End, PRG, etc, were small-ish companies like Ominsistem out of Washington.  They’ve got a very large selection of fixtures and effects (as well as audio, truss, staging, etc), and their booth was hopping the whole weekend.  Give their selection of products a look-see.

Coemar had a pretty kickin’ booth this year at LDI. Coemar, Elation, Chauvet, and Vari*Lite had great booths. Actually, a lot of people had great booths. Barco and PRG’s booths were equally as excellent, and the people at PRG and Barco were extremely friendly and helpful. Martin’s booth was interesting as always - but in addition to the beautiful fixtures on display, I got snubbed a lot, and all I wanted to do was talk to someone about the Mac III. I’ve been using Mac 2000’s of both spot and wash flavors for years. I was bummed to get snubbed.

Rant over. Here’s Coemar’s booth. I do recommend checking out their new Infinity series luminaires. They’re pretty darned bright. Check out the Infinity Wash S, the Infinity Spot S, and the Infinity ACL.

And yeah. The Infinity ACL has a 6° spread. Crazy.

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An article at PLSN this week tells of James Blunt’s current tour, and how seven Mac III’s are out on it, getting run through the paces.  Paul Normandale of Lite Alternative in England designed the Mac III’s into the rig, high on a circle truss.  Normandale, the lighting, scenic, and video director of the tour, said he chose the Mac III’s because he was looking for ‘a bright hard edge fixture for venues with trim heights of up to 48 feet, and he needed a powerful spot to go with the Martin LC Series LED panels.’  From the article:

“I’m impressed,” Normandale said, of the 1500-watt profile spots. “The fixtures offer a significantly brghter tier of lighting, a great wide aperture source, a dramatic zoom, real strobing — and finally a real red.”

Normandale also commented on the output and zoom of the Mac III:

“Even at extreme zoom it has light to spare from a trim of nearly 50 feet across a video wall,” Normandale said, of the MAC III’s ability to punch out more than 33,000 lumens.

Remember the post I made a month ago about Martin’s next gen moving head?

I do believe it’s out!  Martin’s third generation of moving heads, the Mac III, is packing a hell of a punch.  Too bad I’m not hitting LDI this year, otherwise I’d be drooling in Martin’s booth like in 2006 when the TW-1 came out.

Look at that sexy beast!  Check out some specs:

If you’re a Martin Mac 2000 fan like me, you’re certainly going to appreciate the Mac III. Martin is rolling out a new fixture at the PLASA convention this year. Mac III is going to be a 1500W luminaire, and the first in a series of Martin’s third generation fixtures. Mac III also boasts better optics, color mixing, some great looking prisms, movement speed improvements, animation effects, lower noise cooling, and up to 75% more output than current 1200W profiles.

Check out this video on Martin’s website showcasing some of the Mac III’s new features.  Gotta love that new prism!

Looks like PRG is suing Martin Lighting for some sort of patent infringement.  According to the article from the great folk at PLSN:

Court documents filed on July 15 at the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York cite 20 counts of patent infringement. They include the assignable macro functions and other user interface features for Martin Maxxyz consoles, pixel-based gobo record control format for Martin Maxedia media servers and the lamp and three-color digital gobo system for Martin MAC luminaires.

Let’s hope there is more info about this in the near future.