SLE - Week 2

This week’s blog post is a highlight of a sneak peak review of the newly released Best Boy 4000 Spotlight by PRG.  While browsing Live Design Online, my eye was caught by quite the unusual looking intelligent fixture in the articles summary blurb.  But of course, with a name like “Best Boy”, you can’t help but read a bit more.

So why should anyone turn their head to this new fixture?  Well there are several reasons why this new toy deserves the high reviews but first and foremost, this is one of the first fixtures on the market to take full advantage of the new servomotor technology and implement them in every mechanism.  The trending theme of this fixture of “smooth, fast, and quiet” starts with its motors and their ability to move the fixture smoothly without the jitter like that of micro stepping motors, and quickly without becoming obscenely loud.

But what is a light without a lamp? Exactly, so the next impressive thing on the list is the lamp and optic train.  Best Boy uses an MSR-700 short arc lamp but it is electronically overdriven to 800 watts which provides 21,000 lumens of output.  Even with all the motors active at full speed simultaneously, the fixture only pulls 5 amperes at 208 volts.  The auto-sensing power supply can accept input voltages anywhere from 90 to 264 volts.

The optics system, driven by servomotors, provides an 8:1 zoom/focus track allowing the beam angle to range from 8º to 64º which is exceptionally versatile.  The typical hotspot formed by all fixtures, though, is not something that is produced by Best Boy; the pool of light is completely even field.  By default, a tracking auto-focus feature is enabled which will keep gobos in focus and will transition quickly and smoothly.

Speaking of gobos, Best Boy has two wheels of 6 gobos each, all rotatable, and include two “moiré” effects – a kaleidoscopic and animation type of effect.  In a third wheel, several choice of multiplying and faceted prisms are offered.  The two gobo wheels have enough space between them to offer the ability to focus shift between the patterns.

Finally, color.  Best Boy offers CMY color mixing, driven by (again) servomotors which can snap between colors at opposite ends of the spectrum as fast as adjacent dichroics in a color wheel – which Best Boy has a dichroic wheel too.  The most fascinating thing, though, is the dimmer and color temperature correction wheels.  Both of these are dichroic gradients to offer smooth and continuous shifts which makes a very even dimmer curve and offers many options in color temperature.  More impressive, though, is yet another wheel which offers a minus-green gradient so you can mock the apparent lamp age of other fixtures in the rig.  This is especially handy when using the Best Boy in a rig full of conventionals as the CT wheel offers matching to a Source 4.

I must admit that I am a bit sad that I missed this great product from PRG at LDI last week.  I hope for an opportunity to become personally acquainted with such an amazing and useful fixture.  This really is something you have to see to believe.  Why not check out a video of Best Boy in action?