Robe's South African distributors DWR Distribution staged a special Technical Workshop covering Robe's Digital Series at their Johannesburg base. This was organised in conjunction with Robe Lighting, who's technical sales manager Ales Grivac was on hand to demonstrate the products and discuss all things technical with interested parties.

The Workshops were attended by a selection of designers and engineers actively involved in working with these products, and those included DigitalSpots, MediaHUB and StageQubes.

DWR sold the first Robe DigitalSpots into Africa earlier this year, purchased by Mike Jones of MJ Event Gear, also based in Johannesburg. The busy rental company covers a host of corporate and TV work with some rock ‘n' roll .... And DigitalSpot has proved an ideal product for many of their shows and events.

This was the second Robe DigitalSpot workshop in South Africa this year. The first followed soon after the initial DigitalSpots arrived with MJ Events, and also after the first StageQubes in the country had arrived, purchased by Mark Gaylard of MGG.

Now these have been used on plenty of events, it was the ideal time for a second Technical Workshop.

Mike Jones thinks one of the best DigitalSpot features is that they can be used to reproduce any gobo, and that content can easily be downloaded from the internet effectively replacing the need for glass gobos - which can be very costly on a one off basis.

He describes the keystoning correction as "awesome" and thinks that the 5.5K projector offers "plenty of punch".

MJ Event Gear's DigitalSpots have been used on a number of high profile events, including an outdoor performance by the Ten Tenors at Monte Casino, where they were used to project water and fire effects on the surrounding buildings.

Corporate events utilising the DigitalSpots have included one for the PICA Magazine Awards, where they needed to project 180 front covers. This was an exercise that was quick, easy and cost-effective using the DigitalSpots, which  would have been the complete opposite using conventional glass gobo projection techniques.

One of MJ Event Gear's designers, Francois van der Merwe adds, "We were looking for something new and different to bring into the country, and DigitalSpots are the perfect technology - making video hugely more flexible and accessible for many shows."

He also says that the keystoning has been a great help, recalling scenarios where the client has wanted screens located in areas with challenging amounts of room available to mount the projectors. However using the keystoning function, they can still get the perfect image from higher or steeper angles.

He adds that clients are also starting to see the possibilities of what can be done. They recently supplied lighting and AV for ‘restructuring' presentation for National Brands which entailed them projecting over 200 logos.

They have also used them for DVD shoots in their workshop, for creating backdrops behind the artist.