Well, sure... But "you get what you pay for" has different meaning to different folk...
You could go out and
play soccer with a 65Q, and then hang it... You wouldn't want to do that with an Acclaim
This is a really terrible idea. The 65Q's balance and shape are completely inefficient when it comes to soccer games. Now hockey, on the other
hand... I'll bet it would slide on ice very nicely.
I don't think Gafftaper was taking a stab at the overall quality of
Altman's base-level
fresnel. I think it's more of a 'features' thing. Street price of an
Altman 65Q is in all actuality around $100, and for that you get something that produces plenty of controllable light, but you have to deal with a wingnut on the bottom for focusing and a hinged front door that may or may not disrupt your barndoors and other accessories. You also lose the fourth clip, meaning you could have a wayward front-end accessory if the
fixture is focused straight down -- this, I believe, is one of the worst things about the light. Everything else, I could live with. I usually keep my fresnels on one setting since they are generally used as toplight in my designs. Now,
Altman's 1KAF
fresnel - don't even get me started. What an awful focusing mechanism. I'd take 65Q's over that anyday, honestly.
On to
ETC's light -- interestingly the counterbalance
yoke design is nothing new. I'm going to have a hard time backing this up, since the company is out of business, but Packaged Lighting Systems actually used a similar design on many of their fresnels and ellipsoidals. I believe it was a milled piece of aluminum with a slot down the middle, which allowed the
yoke to be slid forward and backward, changing the overall balance of the
fixture. They also had these "pole focusing" lights which had some sort of a eye-bolt looking thing on the bottom. Apparently, you could use a special pole to focus the fixtures from the
ground. Of course, this was totally dependent on the
fixture being hung more or less horizontal which is only useful half the time when you're dealing with overhead lighting on
stage.
I'm looking forward to testing out
ETC's lamp changing mechanism. It appears that it could be a bayonet-style
system, requiring a quarter-turn or so to get the
socket out. Hopefully this doesn't seize up like the mechanism on the
Strand SL. I'm sure
ETC has tested it extensively, and in many different conditions, so I doubt it will be a problem.
Other than that, they have used a
dichroic reflector which will be interesting to see. I'm assuming the
lens is just a standard
fresnel lens. I'm surprised - seems like they would have come up with some radical, new hi-def, ultra-hip
fresnel wave
lens or something.
Now,
ETC, make us a true,
HPL CYC light, or make us some stripped lenses for the multipars
