Return to news index

Record breaking numbers

Published: 29 March 2008

With 112,000 visitors from 126 countries, Musikmesse & Prolight + Sound beat the 2007 record figures by 4 percent. The top visitor nations were from Europe: Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden, France, Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, Greece, and overseas: USA, South Korea, Japan, Israel, China, Australia, Brazil, Canada.

Detlef Braun, Member of the Board of Management at Messe Frankfurt said: "Both trade fairs have marked a new record - both in terms of exhibitor and visitor participation." Certainly, many exhibitors were able to confirm to me their success with new contracts and orders being placed.

You can be sure that next year's show (1-4 April) is going to be busy.

Here are a few notes on our most enjoyable visit - see also the photo gallery.

ADB

On display was the new zoom profile spotlight WARP/Daylight, the most recent member of the growing Warp family. Fitted with a 575w daylight discharge lamp with the light output comparable with the one of a 2500w daylight lamp. This spotlight certainly looks good, is lightweight, energy efficiency and cost effective.

ADB report recent successes with the Warp. In France the leading commercial TV station, TF1, has converted its main news studio with an overhead ring of 36 silent, fanless, fully automated Warp/M zooms and in Belgium Studio-A of Brussels has moved to HDTV (High Definition TV) with the purchase of Warp zoom profiles.

Clay Paky

Clay Paky is one of the leading brands in the sector of professional lighting systems and their products include moving body and moving mirror projectors, colour changers, followspots and projectors for architectural lighting.

On show was the whole of its range of ALPHA moving body projectors, from 300w to 1200w. Among them all the latest at Clay Paky, the low power ALPHA BEAM 300 stood out which, together with the other small compact 300W projectors, spot and wash, represents compactness and the great features of the whole Alpha range. It is an innovative alternative to a Par 64 ACL in a compact and powerful moving light beam producing three times the brightness of an ordinary 1200 w wash projector, generating a "tube of light" with a natural beam of 8° This service friendly, easy to install and use Alpha Beam 300 is the ideal for live professional use especially "long throw" to cut through the brightness of stage washes or LED backgrounds.

GE

A nice array of GE's latest products for event and entertainment lighting included the "Staybright" CSR 1200/S and CSR 1500/S double ended lamps with high luminous maintainance throughout their lives. There was also the introduction of the new twist and lock base on single ended lamps with the 700W/SA and 1500W/SA versions on display.

Griven

With searchlights, moving head projectors and fully weatherised IP65 LED fixtures this Italian company's stand was very impressive. Well known for their products for the professional theatre market including Fresnels, followspots, intelligent scanners and moving heads Griven have now extended the range with the powerful Xenon 2000w scroller designed for entertainment and architectural applications and rugged enough for touring.

The Globe range of single and multibeam, colour changing searchlights, also on display, which come with 4000w or 7000w xenon lamps, are powerful enough to give a truly spectacular display in the sky or at a live show. Also displayed was the new Graph-i-Spot which is a super compact single 3W full-colour LED unit that can be easily assembled with other units of its kind in any shape to build a virtual LED screen on almost all surfaces.

Martin

One of the largest manufacturers of lighting fixtures for all sectors of the entertainment industry, the large Martin stand entitled "let us show you some love" found on display all the new moving heads in the award-winning MAC range, including the extra bright version of the MAC 2000 Wash (see our March 2008 Newsletter), new indoor and outdoor LED luminaires, new Mania flower and rollerscan effect lights, Magnum and Jem brand smoke machines and new lighting control systems.

The MAC range included the 575 Krypton™ which combines super efficient optics for brighter output with outstanding gobos and colours, all wrapped in a modular design and the smartMAC™ giving a fanless cooling system, unbeatable optical efficiency and with a compact design combine to deliver superb performance anywhere you need it.

Now that LED fixtures are fully part of the entertainment scene, Martin are well served with their weatherproof long life exterior 200 LED™ offering full RGB + Amber and White colour mixing and the Alien LED Downlight™ designed for accent lighting in coloured or variable white light and with IP65 rating means it's equally suited to both indoor and outdoor environments.

A very welcoming and busy stand, it was a great "hands on" opportunity to see the wide range of fixtures that Martin manufacture.

Multi-Lite

As one of the leading distributors of stage, studio, TV, film lamps and other specialist lamps, Multi-Lite have more than 4000 different lamp types ready for immediate dispatch and additionally provide consignment inventories for partners in South Africa and Austria.

On show was the Q-Max product range of discharge lamps, which are made in Japan and manufactured under ISO 9001. The newest lamp shown was the Q-MAX QTI 1200 SA/DE Stingray which has a colour temperature of 6000K and constant characteristics for the entire life-time of the lamp.

Osram

With the usual large and busy stand, Osram showed their latest products from the Xstage Xenon short arc lamps which are specially developed for outdoor, event and entertainment lighting to the ever more versatile Lok-it system of quartz discharge and halogen lamps of different wattages with combination of base and holder allowing one handed lamp replacement without any tools.

With an eye on the developing LED market the new KREIOS with its 12 power LED chips has been developed for versatile use on film sets or in the studio. This compact module comes with an integrated processor, heat sink and control gear giving a colour temperature ranging from 2,000 to 20,000 Kelvin all in a mere 34 x 34 mm.

Philips

On show were the new Philips Helios Xenon lamps with both 2000w and 3000w available. These lamps produce up to 30% more light than standard designs of the same wattage. and are completely interchangeable with standard lamp models, with no modification to equipment or special alignment required. Philips say that Helios produces unmatched optical performance including brighter pictures, more vivid colours and high definition pictures. With instant ignition these lamps are designed for use in the industry's most technically advanced equipment. Other features include less power consumption and lower priced lamps which result in lower operating costs.

Robert Juliat

Attracting many orders on the stand was the super-bright Lancelot 4K HTI image projector and the latest followspot model, the MSR 1800w Victor. "We were extremely pleased with the interest generated by our stand again this year," comments Lionel Garraud, International Sales Director. "The Lancelot has really come into its own now, with customers grasping the concept behind its motorized, modular design. They are now using it in ways which exhibit its full potential beyond that of just a followspot."

Also on show for the first time in Germany was the new Storm exterior lighting enclosure specially designed for the MSR 575w Quincy profile by Tempest Lighting. Designed for long term and permanent outdoor installations, this weatherproof lighting enclosure opens up a whole new market for advertising when used in conjunction with high quality gobo images, projected to perfection by the crisp optics of the Quincy.

SGM

Founded more than 30 years ago SGM is now one of the world's best known companies in the entertainment and architectural lighting fields.

Taking centre stage on the impressive SGM stand was the Giotto Digital 1500 which was being given its world preview. This completes the four fixture series in a single modular body making them exceptionally flexible to use. By means of the modules' potential future updates, it will also be possible to integrate easily new functions, while still continuing to use the same fixture. Like the entire series, the SGM Giotto Digital 1500 has truly revolutionary features.

Patenting a special application of DLP technology, SGM has managed to combine the advantages of digital video projection with the experience built up in designing moving head fixtures which, thanks to their brightness and speed, have become a standard in the most important live, theatre and television applications. With an endless library of images and films, which can be customized, luminosity up to 10.500 ANSI Lumens in digital mode, 28.000 Lumens in light mode, colour rendering (CRI 85), brightness and colour temperature of 6000°K, the Giotto Digital 1500 is an extraordinary invention for its endless range of animation effects, luminous output and movement speed.

Studio Due

With an international reputation as one of the market leaders in the field of professional lighting, Studio Due's spacious stand was awash with LED fixtures from the new worm like D color which directs the wash beam in unlimited positions with both rotating and tilt movement to the DMX controllable RGB City Led/C which provides low cost technology for back lighting and display applications.

Their well known range of moving heads was also shown to great effect with the Excess used for TV and live shows (700w and 1200w versions available) and the Shark (available in 150w and 250w versions).

Velleman

Showing under their HQPower banner, this Belgium company Velleman Components nv had a very wide ranging display of their products on show. They have been a major distributor of electronics for more than 35 years with their warehouses containing over 18,000 different products from 50 brands. With numerous LED products available from the RGB video wall with the capability to run DVD or other movie applications to dance floors and the new PAR 56 with 76 LEDs. But these are by no means the only products that Velleman had on the stand with the 1200w Smoke machine, HMI 575 Scanner and the 400w architectural spot light also on display.