High End Systems (HES) has launched and is now shipping its newest automated luminaire, the Showgun™. It made its US debut at the “Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis” concert on 07.07.07

Showgun is in essence a larger than normal automated light that can project images, change and mix dichroic colors, and switch from hard-edge to soft-edge all within a compact system. Adding an extra bit of flash is the LED Tracking System, which forms a circle around the lens.

Showgun’s main output uses a 2,000-watt short arc metal halide lamp, designed as a joint venture between Philips and High End Systems. The new MSR 2000SA Gold lamp uses a novel fast fit socket design that allows for a more compact reflector combination. Combining the high-performance lamp, advanced reflector, and revolutionary optical design, Showgun produces more than 100,000 lumens of output.

The LED Tracking System is a homogenously mixed RGB LED circular array, which allows the user to either match the color of the main output beam, or to project a complementary color by mixing RGB values. The LED Tracking System alone produces more than 5,000 lumens of output. It can be switched on and off via a DMX lighting controller, depending on the desired look.

At the forefront of the fixture is a new patent-pending optical design. This optical design incorporates a proprietary, optically accurate polymer microfresnel lens allowing Showgun to produce a focused hardedge or a soft-edge beam combination, without the need for two separate fixtures. The hardedge beam allows SHOWGUN to project HES glass LithoPattern™ images and texturized Art Glass for effects, while the soft-edge produces a washlight beam.

HES CTO/Co-Founder Richard Belliveau says Showgun is shaping the future of lighting design using a current method of “radical rethinking.”

LD Patrick Dierson of Artfag specified 18 Showgun fixtures for the event at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. Mainlight Industries, the first US company to purchase Showgun, supplied the fixtures to event lighting contractor PRG.

Live Earth was a 24-hour global effort of musical concerts, promoted by former vice president Al Gore designed to increase awareness of our climate crisis and to encourage the world to “go green.”