Rosco ImagePro

Crewguy7

Member
Anybody ever use these? We rented 5 of them to project stained glass windows. Lets just say, they aren't worth the money. There two significant problems with them. The first is since the image goes into the iris slot of a Source Four, there is almost no way to get the image clear. Much worse, the fixture must be nearly perpendicular to the surface which you're projecting on, or else there is no way to even remotely sharpen the entire image at once due to the ellipse shape. But i dunno, maybe others have had better luck with them.
 
I've never heard of those, is it like a projector? or is it a little glass disc you put in the gobo slot of an s4. I know we've used the latter of the two and have never had that problem.
 
We rented one once and never ended up using it and actually sent it back for a refund because it simply didn't work. Instead we used gobos and a projector hooked up to a computer for still images on the backdrop.
 
Yeah, the Image Pro uses plastic slides cooled by a reflector and fan to project images, the slides last at max 50 hours. Glass gobos work much better but cost hundreds of dollars.
 
We used an ImagePro on one of our sets. We had a scrim and wanted to project an image onto the front rather than paint it because we're cheap and only have the one scrim.

Anywho, it worked all right, only problem was the front light somewhat washed out the image (though not the fault of the ImagePro, just poor lighting angles) but you could still kind of see it. The big problem was that the 1 light needed to be enough front light to stop the scrim from being transparent which was our biggest down-fall, though it still worked in the end. We also bought the slide kit so we could find a picture that worked well, could do it ourselves and was also cheap. It was like $30 or something close to that.

Over-all it is a nice little toy if you want to project one image, but once again the problem with projections is the tendency to get washed out and therefore force the designer to find other angles for the light. However it definitely does suck that you basically have to have a straight on angle to keep the image from key-stoning. I some what wish we hadn't bought it, I could have thought of a hundred better and more useful things to buy with the money. However, we had no problem getting the image to be clear, rolling the barrel to sharpen the edges did the trick for us.
 
I spoke with the folks from Rosco at LDI last year and they readily admit that the Image Pro is not going to produce a high quality, crisp image. The idea, as far as I understood, was to create a tool that would allow for a less expensive alternative to glass image gobos.

If you want to save some money, you might investigate making your own images using your color printer and overhead projector sheets. This will work, but again the image quality is not great.

You can only use this with a S4, SL , Shakespeare
or Selecon fixture due to the temperature extremes associated with older ellipoidals.

Also, the greater the saturation of color, the shorter the life of your slide. However, the image is easily replaced.

The image is placed in the gobo slot using the fixtures designated gobo holder. We have tried this
as an experiment and although not thrilled with the result, were satisfied that for less specific images (breakups and the like) it would work pretty well.

DWT1
 
dwt1 said:
The image is placed in the gobo slot using the fixtures designated gobo holder. We have tried this
as an experiment and although not thrilled with the result, were satisfied that for less specific images (breakups and the like) it would work pretty well.

DWT1

what? you dont place the image in a gobo slot or a gobo holder. the way the imagepro works is by placing a fan to circulate air through the image to keep it cool, if the fan didnt turn on, it would burn through in a matter of seconds, so you could never place an image in a gobo holder. also, the image pro fits in the iris slot.

ive used the image pro a lot, probably around every single show that i work on i use it for something. we have pipes in our theatre that has a very short throw distance, so you can get a bright image, also, ive never had a problem with getting a sharp image, though ive only needed to get a super sharp image once before
 
Hi:

I would have thought that it would burn through immediately, but indeed it does stay intact.

The concept and technique was described several years ago in an issue of USITT's monthly publication "Sightlines".

Try it, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

DWT1
 

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