Ipswich Civic Centre is a stunning combination of premier entertainment venue and community-focused function centre. It provides a range of services and facilities to support a wide cross-section of the local community and through the exciting theatre program presents live music, special events and theatrical performances.
As the venue’s old profile fixtures began to need too much maintaining and started to cost a fortune in hard-to-find bulbs, the decision was made to find a replacement.
“The power transformers were dying on our old stock so it was definitely time to replace them,” said Ben Harth, Theatre Technician. “We were keen to find a replacement that was as close to the brightness of our old 80 volt fixtures and that was pretty tricky. The colour temperature was also extremely important; we did find a couple of fixtures that were close in brightness but they didn’t have the colour temperature we were after.”
Fortunately the Robert Juliat ZEP 661 SX WW profile spot, designed with Robert Juliat’s trademark qualities of ergonomic perfection, optical and mechanical excellence, delivers the above requirements and so much more. Consequently after extensive testing and research, the venue decided on ten of these fixtures.
“We tested a few products with a light meter; at 13 metres, set at 14 degrees our current lights were giving us a reading of 470 lux and the ZEP 661 SX was 460 lux …. However the perception was a fixture that is just as bright as our current lights.” remarked Ben. “It produced a nice smooth flat beam, which was great, but it was the exceptional colour rendering and variable zoom of 11° to 26° that sealed the deal.”
In fact ZEP features an excellent colour rendering index and its’ variable zoom optics allow sharp focus at every beam angle. There is independent control of image size and focus as well as Focus handles on both sides of the fixture.
“The shutter lock as well as the gobo lock is handy, you can rotate them all and once they’re all adjusted, you can lock them off and you’re done,” added Ben. “It means there are no shutters accidentally falling in midway through a show. Ease of use is also impressive with the onboard menus easy to navigate.”
Not only will the venue’s power bill noticeably decrease with the purchase of Robert Juliat ZEP profiles, the cost of lamps will be a thing of the past as the ZEP’s long-life LED source is 50,000 hours!
