Quote Originally Posted by richbell
Jason.. you wrote
"For aerial effects, they are great, for anything else, they are not that great."

Huh?? The DL-1s looked good for aerial projections but you could not see them projected on a screen uhmm (fabric)? Think about that for a moment....

The only way a projector or light of ANY kind would look better projecting aerials but not good when projecting on a screen would be if the screens uhmm (fabric) were poorly suited.

This could have been fabric that only imaged a low portion of the light to the viewer.. like a net or dark fabric that absorbed light. Screen or scrim selection if very important.

Again.. if a DL-1 did not read on this "fabric" a 10k or 15K projector would have made very little difference. So check your fabric or check screen area (size).

To help promote understanding please go to:

http://www.highend.com/products/digi...hting/dl_1.asp

and click "DL1 in Action" there you will see actual shots of DL-1 in action on stage with many 1200 and 700 watt conventional movers. The answer to using video projection on stage is the proper set up of the stage and screens.

Richard Belliveau
Hehe Richard,

When the DL-2 comes out, hopefully you won't have to spend so much energy explaining all of this.

I can see where you are coming from as I understand the circumstances under which a DL1 can look good projected on a screen. It does take circumstances however as opposed to putting a mirror on a lighting 28sx which most people don't understand. Things like Screen material, ambient light, throw, maximum levels adjustment in your imagery, etc... A lot of people that I know see it marketed more as a regular lighting fixture with video for gobos and they misunderstand it when it doesn't look that great next to a hundred mac 2k washes. It's a specialized fixture and I'm glad that you have posted some sort of guide to getting the most out of it but this should have been done much earlier, like before you came back, not your fault.

Nevertheless, even in the projector world, brightness is a selling factor, circumstances or not. The DL-1 lays within the PowerPoint or corporate presentation projector class, which is great if you don't need more punch. People will say what they see, lighting or video engineers alike, even Highend engineers. I myself have always thought that the fixture has a place in the industry, but it has gotten a bad wrap for its lack of punch. I think again that this is a marketing mistake and could have been avoided had it been prefaced by more facts about the circumstances under which the DL-1 shines best. If you think about all the disappointed people that have used the fixture in their tour that were never made aware of the environment and circumstances that the fixture best shines in, you would understand what I mean. Marketing strategy. A similar parallel could be drawn to the Hog 3, bad marketing - telling everyone in the beginning that it was very close to being finished, etc... Convincing a lot of underdeveloped consoles to be sold... All mistakes that have cost Highend a lot of money and even worse, trust.

So now you're back at highend having to clean up that mess and try to convince all of those dissapointed people that if you would have done x than your result would have been much better. I can't imagine what your day must be like. I really wish you the best of luck and I for one am looking forward to the right show to come along for me to use them so i can send you some good press and pictures. The only time I used them, all I had was a wood surface to use them on, hardly a projection surface but they were actually punchier than I thought they were gonna be. I knew though that they would've worked well on the right surface.

I still loved the idea of the orbital mirror heads on the lightning sx, barcos, and christies. They really were cool cept for the erector set that you had to put together around the unit.

I like to see this place as a wealth of information and experiences from the users of Catalyst that everyone can learn from. Bleasedale has done a fabulous job providing an informative place where people can be honest about their experiences/suggestions and get listened to. It has proven to be very useful because he has listened to everyone's suggestions and has in turn improved the software because of them.

It would be nice to see the same thing with the Hog 3. A mutually beneficial situation like this is invaluable to both the user and the developer.

Good job, R. Bleasedale.

Christian