SIB trade fair in Rimini, Italy, April 5-8 2008

The 2008 SIB lighting and sound trade show was held April 5-8 in Rimini, Italy. This show has recently been held every two years. In fact, ILDA's 2006 Conference was held in Rimini, in conjunction with SIB.

RGB Laser System International generously donated space to ILDA. I handed out the current Membership Directory, plus the publication "Complete Guide to Laser Shows for Event Producers" magazine. The purpose is to increase the use of laser shows, and of ILDA Members to produce those shows and provide equipment.

There were far fewer exhibitors at SIB 2008, than at its 1990s peak. For example, long-time SIB exhibitors Martin and Clay Paky were not at this year's event. For 2008, there were lasers in eight stands, all in hall A7. Details and photos are below.

The first two days' attendees were mostly sightseers and even families. Business contacts were made on the subsequent two days. For all days, the attendee quantity and quality was lacking. Most exhibitors I spoke with felt the show should be only three days long -- one weekend (sightseer) day and two business days.

One ominous note was that laser safety violations seemed worse than in most past SIB shows. Two or three exhibitors had audience-accessible beams that, at times, were far above MPE levels.

The frame grab at right shows an example booth which had moving-head laser projectors scanning collimated beams at near-point-blank range, at eye level. Click on the photo to see a QuickTime movie (28 MB) of these three people being scanned (though the movie does not show the worst-case of the close-up point-blank projector).

From an equipment standpoint, the coolest device was a new projector/effect from Arctos Laser, shown at the Laser Entertainment/Laser System Europe stand. It projects cylinders and cones of light.

It is very nice to see a laser effect that is not simply a "V" of light coming from a scanner. More information and two movies of it in action are below.

On behalf of ILDA, I'd like to thank Tam�s Bozs�, CEO of RGB Laser System International for inviting ILDA's participation and providing booth space. Many thanks also to Ante Uglesic and Maja Rozman of Pangolin Laser Systems. They were hosts at the hotel and provided transportation and assistance each day. In addition, Blisslights kindly provided a projector to help demonstrate lasers and draw attention to the ILDA display.

SIB and ILDA overview
	Exterior view of Rimini Fiera exhibition hall.

	Interior walkway at Rimini Fiera. Each arch is one exhibition hall; SIB filled five halls.

	Executive Director Patrick Murphy, in front of the ILDA section of the RGB stand. The green dots and blue glow are from a Blisslights BL-50 projector, which uses advanced holographic diffraction grating to create a very dense dot pattern.

	The Blisslights projector got a lot of attention from passersby. Many thought we were selling the projector, instead of drawing attention to ILDA <g>. I did provide Blisslights information to many attendees, so Blisslights definitely got a benefit from their ILDA Membership and equipment donation!
RGB Laser System International (with Pangolin and ILDA)
	There was a lot going on at the RGB stand. On the top were two 5-watt lasers, to attract attention. Every half-hour RGB presented a laser show (left hand side). Just behind the left curtain is a Pangolin display. Cabinets in the center held various lasers and diode modules. The ILDA stand is at the right, with the Blisslight projector just behind the tree at extreme right. On the back wall, mice (or rats?) skittered about, projected from the HB Laser stand.

	Viewers at the every-half-hour laser show.

	Click to see a QuickTime (.mov format) movie, of the finale of the RGB laser show. It was run by Sandor Wensky of Prolaser in Hungary. QuickTime movie is a 65 MB download -- please be patient.

	The Compact 2 RGB and Professional 2 RGB projectors. It is amazing how small a 2-watt, full-color projector (including scanners) can be nowadays. These are very similar; the Professional 2 adds features such as DMX-controlled beam divergence. This is useful to remotely enlarge or tighten the beam for safety reasons, when the projector is hard to reach.

	Pangolin was in the RGB stand along with ILDA. Ante Uglesic and Hayden Hale demonstrated Pangolin software and hardware. The plasma TV at top right is showing Light Converse software. This is for real-time visualization of stage lighting; it now can also display Pangolin beams and graphics in real-time. Projectors at the RGB stand were controlled with a mixture of local Pangolin QM2000 boards (inside computers), and QM2000.NET remote boards connected over Ethernet cable.
Laser Entertainment/ Laser System Europe stand
	The highlight of the Laser Entertainment/Laser System Europe stand was a new laser projector device from Arctos Laser. It uses scanners which are spun in a circle, roughly a meter in diameter. If the scanner is projecting straight outwards, the resulting spun image is of a cylinder of light. If the scanner is projecting inwards towards the center, the image is of a focused cone of light.

	Click on the animation at left, to see a QuickTime movie (.mov format, 20MB) of the circle scanner in action. The actual scanning effect is smoother in real life than in the movie. This is because the movie's 30 frames-per-second rate doesn't match the laser's scan rate, so there is some flicker and choppiness in the movie.

	Click on the photo to view another QuickTime movie (16 MB) of the spinning scanner projector.

	Overall view of the stand. Laser Entertainment's Alberto Kellner is at left behind the counter, while LSE's Patrick Awouters is at right.
Kvant stand
	Dr. Pavol Kubo�ek, CSc., director of Kvant Ltd., in front of his stand. Kvant ran shows on the first day, but neighboring stand Airstar had too-bright lights from their lighting balloons.

	Kvant introduced the "Puton" red-blue extension for their existing "Maxim" 5-watt green projector. By adding 3 watts of red and 3 of blue in the Puton, a Maxim can be converted from green to full color. Puton/Maxim can be used as a single RGB projector or as two separate scanning projectors (G/RB). At 39 kg, the combination weighs less than Kvant's standard 10-watt RGB projector, which is 50 kg.


HB Laserkomponenten stand
	The very busy HB Laser stand. On the right side was a small "black box" laser show. HB also projected laser mice or rats on the back wall of Hall 7. (The green laser which is hitting the person at the left edge of the photo is coming from the GTLaser stand. During the first three days, GTLaser aimed their beams straight out into the audience.)

	HB was featuring the LightCube Nexgen series of RGB projectors. This is a rugged "plug and play" laser projector with great flexibility in laser source, and everything built in. It is available in powers from 4 to 17 watts. The red is now 642nm, which is said to be twice as visible as the 658nm diodes previously used. The laser itself is shock-mounted on the inside. Because of its ruggedness, the LightCube will be used in an installation for the upcoming Olympics in China. HB also is certified by Coherent to use the new Venom lasercavities with HB's own driver. HB will shortly have a red single-color LightCube, to go along with their blue, green and yellow single-color versions.

	I was impressed by the wide array of controls and inputs on the back. It has features such as a switch to mirror the incoming X signal, to easily drive two projectors, one on each side of the stage, from a single signal source.

	A view of the "black box" where laser shows were presented throughout the exhibition.
Cittadini Light Systems stand
	Fernando Cittadini of the Spanish company Cittadini Light Systems. He showed a number of projectors in his stand.
Other (non-ILDA) laser exhibitors
	GTLaser of Budapest, also known as Scanergy, showed their range of projectors, with Nd:YAG from Boston Laser Technology Inc. "The Revolutionary New Technologies Now of the Market". The lasers from this booth were aimed low into the crowd. You can see this in the first photo of the HB stand, where a beam is coming from the GTLaser stand, at eye level. By the fourth day of the exhibition, GTLaser had aimed their lasers up over the spectators' heads.

	As at the earlier Show-way lighting exhibition, the company I.P.L. showed a projector from Laser Animation (an Italian company not related to Laser Animation Sollinger GmbH of Germany)

	The company One4All srl, a distributor of various lighting equipment, had a small enclosed area filled with low-cost laser projectors for discos. Note that beams are easily accessible. I do not know if the powers were below 5mW per beam (there was a lot of fog in the area, so this made the beams appear bright).