Martin Professional's new MAC 350 Entour LED lighting fixture is being test driven on Crowded House's current world tour by lighting designer Paul Normandale.
"It's a very neat unit and very, very bright for its size," says Normandale, one of the first lighting professionals to get his hands on the new LED profile. Lighting operator/director on the tour is Dave Harding with Normandale's lighting production company Lite Alternative serving as UK lighting vendor with Upstaging handling the US leg.
The Crowded House tour is one of a handful of field test outings for the powerful and energy-efficient LED-based profile moving head which delivers 8,000 lumens of output, the MAC 350 Entour marks a radical advancement in light output compared to other compact LED profiles on the market.
"I was looking for a small, bright profile to suit a range of venue sizes and the 350 Entour seemed ideal, which indeed it was," Normandale states. "Also, as energy concerns are becoming an ever important factor and feature more and more on artists' wish lists, the 350's energy efficiency was very appealing."
The MAC 350 Entour saves on energy by using very little power when the LED sources are not in use. Greater reliability and less maintenance (the LED light sources have a rated life of 25,000 hours) add to the savings, says the company.
Used initially as key lights for band members, in the course of rehearsals Normandale switched to a front truss position after being impressed with the 350 Entour's output and gobos. Along with eight interchangeable dichroic colours the fixture houses six rotating and indexable gobos, all new designs that are easy to change.
Accompanying the 350 Entours in the Crowded House rig are Martin MAC 250 Washes, MAC 700 Profiles and Atomic 3000 strobes.