NAB SPEC I AL | FEATURE
STEVEN STRONG, CEO, QUASAR SCI ENCE
S teven Strong is the CEO of Quasar Science, an LED lighting company founded by light technicians. Its first product was a light bulb in the company’s signature tubular shape, but was soon favoured by gaffers as a fixture, which prompted Quasar Science to evolve and bring out products with features archetypal of a modern lighting fixture, like its Rainbow light in 2017. With new tubular lights, the RR100 and RR50, due to launch later this year, alongside a new rigging system that matches the originality of the RRs it was designed for, Strong talks to us about the idea behind and evolution of these products. DEFINITION: What was the concept behind the RR lights? light bulbs is a retrofit fluorescent tube. It’s really small; it doesn’t have a lot of room, but people started using it as a fixture. We wanted to be able to give those people more traditional fixture-like features, such as on- board controls, digital DMX, all that kind of stuff. As we started to evolve that idea, we realised that these little tubes couldn’t fit all of those features – it was almost impossible to get it to work right, and it was kind of gangly and not pretty at all. We wondered, how can we keep this low-profile shape, but get rid of all the penalties from it? I thought: ‘let’s make a double wide tube’. And with the added width, we were able to solve a lot of those form-factor problems with where to put the connectors, control screen and output. It’s an elegant fixture and I hope people will like it. DEF: What are the benefits of a tubular form factor? SS: The low-profile thing is a big plus; you can get the tubes into really tight spaces, so it’s great if you’re shooting in a hallway and need to get a light right in by the camera. Our older lights had problems in the sense that they were too thin, because STEVEN STRONG: We started out as a light bulb company, so one of our they evolved from the fluorescent tube form-factor thinking, and so the RRs add that extra width, which is what enables us to get more features into it.
SS: It is. We have seen a lot of video feed activity going on between the
lighting, effects and camera communities. Being able to feed video straight into the lights is very important for effects, process car work and for getting a true response out of a fire effect or a TV effect, for example. Streaming sACN and Art-Net is also much easier to connect to phones and computers. DEF: You’ve also got another new product, the Ossium. How does this compare to your other mounting system, the Rail?
SS: The Ossium has a rail profile that was originally developed by
NATO for mounting gear in the military. We chose that profile because it provides a skeletal framework to help place lights
BELOW The Ossium mounting system allows different arrays and configurations of LEDs
Being able to feed video straight into the lights is very important for effects
DEF: Is the capability for Art-Net and sACN in the protocol a new feature
to the RR lights?
MAY 2020 | DEF I N I T ION 19
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