We are here at the Prolight and Sound show.
And we show this year a laser show which you have seen at this 6 laser projectors behind me.
These 6 projectors are made by KVANT.
They are each putting out about 1.2 - 1.3 Watt something like that on RGB.
We are operating them at full power.
Now, because of the dimmensions of this trade show, we are really very close to the audience.
Only about 5 meters in distance to the audience.
Which is incredibly close.
Especially for a beam show.
You saw the beam show.
I didnt tell you anything about it.
I did not say to you, watch this thing, I did not prime you in any way.
What I like to do is, ask you, what the reaction to this beam show was.
If you saw anything different?
If you notice anything different?
No, no, the only thing I did notice is, I have seen a lot of lot of laser shows in my life.
And it was pretty noticeable that it was very pleaseant to view.
I have seen a lot of booth here, I looked in and like this.
It was a little bit too bright.
And this one was very pleaseant to look at.
I know a little bit about lasers, and you have done something different with it.
And it is very pleaseant to watch from a close distance.
And what would you say?
I can see that the lasers is a little bit faded, or blur in the lower parts of the show.
Because, I dont know if this is a software or hardware modification.
It looks like it goes out of the focus, but in this case I dont have disturbance in your eyes.
It means that you dont get blinded by the laser.
An after-image.
And you dont even have the effect of closing your eyes when the laser pass through your eyes.
Of course when the laser goes up to your head, you see the sharpness of the beam.
But when it goes down, it looks much safer and of course is less disturbing to view.
Yeah, thats right.
What happens is this: I wrote an article for the Laserist magazine many years ago.
The title of my article was: Making shows safe and effective.
And as laserists is that, what we all want.
We all want safety, but we also dont want to give up the effectivness of the show.
The conclusion of my article and also the conclusion of John O Hagens thesis on audience
scanning is, that the only way to get safety is, to increase the divergence of the beam.
Basically to make the beam bigger.
But the problem is that.
As a laserist, making the beam bigger, goes against any bone on your body.
You know its like, the reason why you are using a laser in first place is a nice tight beam.
The laser beam, when it goes through the air, I call it: Cuts like a knife.
Its just cutting, literally in the air.
And what you can see with the fog is, I call it marbling.
This kind of swirling effect.
And you dont get that with a diverged beam.
We already use something else.
For instance, with Pangolin we can reduce the brightness in the part of the audience,
that can be affected more by the light of the laser.
So we create zones, where the power drops to 30% or less.
But of course this newer thing is a step forward.
Yes.
What you are talking of is the Beam Attenuation Map.
Yes, but the Beam Attenuation Map can also affect your white balance.
When you dim it to very low levels.
With this no.
I didnt notice any white balance change at all.
It was just very pleaseant to view.
Yes.
Because we are operating this at full power.
No Beam Attenuation Map on this.
Can I put a question now: How does it work?
Thats a good question: And I will reveal the answer now.
What we have here is a special lens.
And in the top portion of the lens there is no change of the beam whatsoever and in the
bottom part of the lens.
There is an increased divergence.
Now even though this lens has only two distinct areas: Low divergence and high divergence,
the beam is not infinitely small.
So as the laser beam crosses the split between the two areas, the beam will actually goes
through a transformation, so you dont really perceive you are watching the show.
You dont really perceive this hard delineation.
So even as it looks like a hard split.
If you feel with your fingernail.
Its a really big step there, you dont really perceive that in the show.
And what it does, its kind of like that.
But it is a negative lens, The lens you use in bifocus is a positive lense.
So what we do is, we use a negative lense so it is always divergence the beam.
Its always making the beam safer for for many distanced from the projector.
So what we have.
We have a series of this lens.
Some of them will increase the divergence a little bit, some increase the divergence
a lot.
These lower projectors here really increase the divergence quite a bit.
We have a 200mm focal lenght on that lens.
You guys know the magic system better than I do.
Its something like this.
So the focal lenght on that lens is really very strong.
Because we only have 5m to the audience.
We really got to make it safe in a hurry.
Great.
Thanks guys.
Thank you.
Thank you Bill.
Sure, thank you.