For nearly twenty years lighting designers have been waiting for a replacement for the venerable Vari-lite VL1100. What made that light so special? It was designed like an automated zoom leko with framing shutters, a wide zoom range, a rotating gobo wheel, variable diffusion, and a decent CMY color mixing system. Most importantly, it was virtually silent with no fans needed to cool either a tungsten halogen or HMI lamp. This made the VL1100 ideal for noise-sensitive environments.
Since the introduction of the VL1100, there have been several models of profile moving lights with shutters, but they employed cooling fans and were very expensive. A couple of years ago High End Systems (now owned by ETC) came out with its acclaimed Sola Series of moving lights. The SolaSpot and SolaWash fixtures are powered by very bright LED engines and incorporate CMY color mixing. They too have cooling fans, but are engineered to be very quiet. Now High End Systems has introduced the new SolaFrame series of moving lights. These fixtures are designed to serve as a workhorse of noise-sensitive environments.
There are three models in the SolaFrame family: the SolaFrame 1500, the SolaFrame 2000, and the SolaFrame Theatre. What separates the SolaFrame Theatre from the other models is that it has no fans and is designed to be completely silent.
High End Systems has designed an ingenious liquid cooling system for the ColorFrame Theatre that cools the light engine and internal electronics, making cooling fans unnecessary. For the first time since the VL1100, a light has been developed that is virtually silent. This is obviously ideal for theaters, television studios, opera houses, and yes, houses of worship.
The High End SolaFrame Theatre incorporates a sophisticated, high-CRI Bright White (6000K) 440W LED engine. This engine delivers 15,000 field lumens and has a lamp life of 50,000 hours (L70). This LED light engine has a very high CRI (color rendering index) rating of over 90. This is an impressive rating for an LED moving light and will assure proper color rendering of costumes and flesh-tones (crucial for video applications).
The SolaFrame Theatre features four full-frame, four-plane shutters that can be rotated to create sophisticated framing effects. It has a CMY color mixing system, a linear CTO, fixed and indexing gobo wheels, automated effects, a prism, an iris, a seven-position color wheel, a seven-position interchangeable rotating gobo wheel, an eight-position static gobo wheel, and a linear frost filter.
The fixture is controlled by 47 DMX channels. It has a zoom range from seven degrees to 42 degrees (certainly wide enough for most theatrical applications). It has a strobe effect with one to 25 flashes per second along with a pulse iris effect, step-less linear frost filter (0% to 100%), and even an animation wheel.
The High End SolaFrame Theatre has a full-color LCD touch screen for setting the fixture’s parameters. It also has an internal battery for modifying settings without power. It weighs 111 lbs. and consumes 700W of power.
Finally, the High End SolaFrame Theatre is aggressively priced, thousands of dollars less than most HMI moving lights with framing shutters. Many rental companies have already purchased supplies of these fixtures, which will make my life so much easier when I am in remote cities looking for quiet moving lights with framing shutters. Several tours are out using these fixtures, so their longevity will be aggressively tested.
We are currently testing a couple of SolarFrame Theatres in our light lab and theatres. Look for an upcoming review in Church Production Magazine.
