I’m trying a new series here on JimOnLight where I talk about features that I have found exemplary in certain pieces of equipment, or fixtures, or whatnot.  CHAUVET Professional’s ROGUE RH1 Hybrid gets to be first!

Welcome to The Feature Feature!

I just did a gig with a couple of handfuls of RH1 Hybrids from CHAUVET Professional, and I wanted to reach out to the product management team about what they were thinking when it came to this particular optics set.

Generally, it’s like this — there is a 6-facet linear rotating prism on one wheel, and on another, an 8-facet rotating prism that is more of a circular configuration.

Blah blah blah, watch this.  Here:

Here’s a product video for the RH1 I programmed while at Chauvet — that was one of my favorite parts of the job, helping with pushing the fixtures over that edge of awesomeness.  Here’s the video, programmed on the Tiger Touch 2 — I obviously like this fixture, so you can’t claim bias.  I am biased!  It’s an awesome fixture:

Complete side note here…  when you’re writing palettes for this fixture, make one that has the linear rotating clockwise and the circular rotating counterclockwise, slow to medium speed, and then add some gobo shake JUST enough to see the beam wiggle.  AWESOME SAUCE!!!

I got to chat with Mike Graham, the product manager for the Hybrid (and the Rogue series), I wanted to get more information on what and how they came about the decisions.

JimOnLight:
OK, RH-1 Hybrid.  It’s awesome.  The prism set is frankly my favorite feature, having that 8-facet circular and 6-facet linear counter-rotating with a teeny bit of gobo shake just quite frankly makes my eyes tingle!!  Can you tell me a bit about where the ideas came from for that optical combination came from?  How did you arrive at the two of those together?

Mike Graham:
The idea behind the effects package in the RH1 Hybrid came from the need to step up and away from other hybrid fixtures on the market.  We already had the dual rotating prisms in our Rogue R1 Beam, and they were very effective, but we add in a few more features to really make the RH1 Hybrid special.  By adding in the rotating gobos, we were able to create another facet of motion into this already amazing effect. 

JimOnLight:
Is there anything in that fixture that you had to decide on over something else?  How do you suss out decisions like that?

Mike Graham:
The Rogue RH1 Hybrid was one fixture where we were very sure of the feature set.  We would have liked to have been able to add in CMY, but there were limitations with the optical system that prevented that from becoming a reality. 

JimOnLight:
What’s the coolest visual effect you’ve seen a designer do with your fixture?  The perfect combo of which features pushes the RH-1 over that creative cliff of awesomeness?

Mike Graham:
I have to be completely honest here and say that I am impressed every time I see these lights in action and how different designers use the feature set inside the RH1 Hybrid.  However my favorite was to see a combination of the star rotating gobo in extremely slow rotation with the dual prisms overlapped coming in and out of focus. This effect was being used as a direct view at the audience so you felt like you were inside of a tunnel of light.  On top of all of that, they were using a split color that amplified the effect that much more.  Very cool!