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Thread: Using What I Learned At SELEM for My First Laser Gig. Thoughts/Comments Appreciated.

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    New Orleans
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    286

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    Quote Originally Posted by hakzaw1 View Post
    Great job and awesome pics.

    Thanks! For a while now, I thought I could pull off this type of show, but didn't feel confident telling prospective clients that I could, since I never had. I didn't want to over promise, take a client's cash, and then under deliver and disappoint them. That would look bad for everybody that does laser gigs.

    Now, I've got more experience, learned more and have videos to show to prospects. I'm ready to keep doing shows like this (and even bigger - eventually) as soon as life gets back to normal.

    The turning point for me was last August after SELEM. A few weeks before SELEM, I was excited to get to go to the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular (cheapest seats $40) here in New Orleans. It was nice but the auditorium at SELEM blows it away. PF spectacular uses less projectors and relies on you wearing diffraction grating glasses to multiply the beams. So with what I learned over the last three years at SELEM and seeing that the "professional" Pink Floyd show is less impressive than late night Saturday in the auditorium, I realized that everyone has to start somewhere. This gave me the confidence to take on a paid gig, plan it methodically, practice for days before the show, make back up plans, and bring/setup redundant gear & cable runs. I was nervous at the beginning of the event, but that went away quickly and I'm very happy with how it worked out. Thanks again.

    Oh, and I have my wife to thank for the cool pics and video. Her hobby is amateur photography. She always needs an expensive new lens, camera, or this or that. Sounds familiar!
    Eric in New Orleans

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Charleston, SC
    Posts
    2,147,489,446

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    Quote Originally Posted by djeric68 View Post
    The turning point for me was last August after SELEM. A few weeks before SELEM, I was excited to get to go to the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular (cheapest seats $40) here in New Orleans. It was nice but the auditorium at SELEM blows it away. PF spectacular uses less projectors and relies on you wearing diffraction grating glasses to multiply the beams. So with what I learned over the last three years at SELEM and seeing that the "professional" Pink Floyd show is less impressive than late night Saturday in the auditorium, I realized that everyone has to start somewhere. This gave me the confidence to take on a paid gig, plan it methodically, practice for days before the show, make back up plans, and bring/setup redundant gear & cable runs. I was nervous at the beginning of the event, but that went away quickly and I'm very happy with how it worked out. Thanks again.
    Stories like this absolutely warm my heart.

    Oh, and I have my wife to thank for the cool pics and video. Her hobby is amateur photography. She always needs an expensive new lens, camera, or this or that. Sounds familiar!
    One caveat regarding lasers and cameras... (You're probably already aware of this, but it's something worth repeating.) Always keep in mind that the image sensor on a digital camera can be *more* sensitive to laser damage than the human eye is. It really doesn't take much to burn a few pixels! I have permanently damaged two cameras with less than 100 mw of total power, and in both cases there were no static beams involved.

    So if your wife has an expensive camera, be sure she always has it in a safe zone where there is no chance of it being "flashed" by the scanned image. Or, if you really want to get that perfect shot "inside the time tunnel", at least be sure to use a Beam Attenuation Map to block out the space in the scan field where the camera will be.

    Note that video projectors (both DLP and LCD) are also prone to laser damage. (That's why we always cover the lens on the projector at SELEM with aluminum foil.)

    Adam

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