Martin Professional MAC 250 Entour
Back in April 2006, I had the privilege of being the Lighting Director for Jeremy Camp on his first ever acoustic tour. It was a great experience and I was able to spec some great new products, including the one we are talking about today — the Martin Professional MAC 250 Entour (MSRP $3,858). I speci- fied 12 of these units and by the end of the tour I found them to be some of the best small moving lights I have used.
The Mac 250 Entour is an all-new ground-up redesign of the older MAC 250. The first thing you notice when you approach this fixture is Martin’s great attention to detail when designing moving lights. It is styled to match Martin’s new line up of fixtures that started with the MAC 2000. If you look at the fixture long enough you begin to notice that it looks just like a MAC 2000, only smaller. At about 49 pounds, it is very lightweight. It is a slick little package it has a tilt lock, which is great if you ever have to open it up to change a gobo or do some maintenance. You can lock the head into a few different positions — 180, 90, and 45 degrees. It is a very functional feature if you should ever need to open the fixture.
So we know it looks great on the outside, but how does it do once you turn it on? Well, lets give it a shot. First, we have to find some power. It can accept all kinds of power via its manual voltage selector inside the unit, anything from 100–250 volts, 50/60 Hz. Plugging it into your existing power should be no problem. If you are running it at 120 volts the fixture only draws 2.7 amps, so you could potentially plug three to four units into one 20-amp circuit, which is very nice if your facility has limited power. The only down side I found is that the power cable is an IEC cable and it is detachable, so sometimes when pulling it out of the case the cable may be forgotten, and then you will have to go track it down. This can be a bit of a pain when there are six cases to look through.
Next, we address our fixture and plug in our DMX cable. Addressing is very simple; if you have ever worked with any of Martin’s other fixtures you will feel right at home. It has a very nice touch pad on the side of the base, with four buttons (up, down, menu, and enter), which allow you to navigate through the menu system. It also accepts two different inputs for DMX, three-pin XLR or five-pin XLR. If you have an existing plot of moving lights or devices and you are adding these in you can use whatever your existing cable type is.
Another way Martin has payed attention to detail is in its DMX interface. Once the DMX reaches the fixture it is optically isolated, which is great if you happen to have some dirty DMX. If you have ever had to track down a DMX issue you will know what a great feature this is.
Once you have it connected and patched into a DMX console you are good to go. When I first turned it on I was very impressed by the bright output. Martin has done a very good job of getting a lot out of such a little package. The color temperature of the Philips MSD 250/2 lamp is 8,500K so it is a cobalt white beam. It looks very brilliant if you are projecting it onto a white surface. I used them for backlight and beam effects projecting from the upstage onto the performers downstage, and also used them for ariel moves (sweeps and ballyhoos through the crowd). They looked very beautiful, scanning through the air. I would probably not hang them much higher than 20 feet as they are not a long-throw fixture. It comes standard with a 17-degree lens; the optional 14-degree narrow lens may help with a longer throw. I would have to say they are the brightest 250-watt fixtures I have used. With an output of about 5,000 lumens, they are very versatile whether you are using them for projection or beam effects.
They have great gobo selections, with two gobo wheels, one ten-slot (plus open), replaceable, fixed gobo wheel; and one seven-slot (plus open), rotating gobo wheel with 16-bit precision. You can layer these wheels to create your own textured effect. The gobos read very well in open white — very crisp and clean and with remote focus from the console you can dial in each gobo very sharp, or very soft for a more subtle effect. You can also morph from a gobo on the rotating wheel to a gobo on the fixed wheel. The effects are limitless. The rotation speeds are wonderful, they can rotate very slow as to not be distracting and fast enough to make your head spin.
The fixture uses a 12-slot (plus open), replaceable color wheel. It can do split beam color effects, color roles at a wide range of speeds, color snaps, and a few other color effects. On the brand new Entours I was using, we had a few color issues during programming. After a long period of switching colors and bouncing between different color combinations the color wheel would not snap into the correct slot, making it look like it was in a split beam effect. After a quick Home command from the console all would go back to normal. I never experienced any major color issues during the show, but I would definitely like to see Martin come up with a software update that would fix this issue. Besides this issue, the colors were very rich and beautiful. As with any small fixture, if you put two gobos in and layer a saturated color on top of it you will begin to lose intensity, but this is normal and gobo projection in the lighter colors looks great. They put in a wide verity of colors so no matter how artsy you are you should be able to find colors you like. All the colors I would want on a color wheel were there.
As far as other effects go it has a great strobe shutter and built into the strobe channel are some cool macros that will allow you to do ramp/snap, snap/ramp, and random strobe effects. It’s great if you are in a hurry to program a lightning sequence or if you are using the strobe shutter to accent the beat of the music. I am used to using Martin Atomic 3000 strobes for most of my shows, but there have been a few instances that I didn’t have them and the built-in shutter on the Entour worked great. I also loved the three-way interchangeable rotating prism. It really makes the beam angle a lot wider and allows you to cover quite a bit of space on the backdrop. Although you will lose some intensity, you can achieve some very interesting effects using the prism in rotation one way and a gobo in rotation the other way. Again, the variable speeds allow you to make things very subtle or extremely crazy.
My overall experience using this fixture has been one of great delight. I found myself very happy with the overall features for a fixture of its size. It is such a nice sized package. It is very compact and not too heavy. I never heard anyone complain about moving it around and I was able to fit 12 of them in a very small amount of space on the truck. From a church stand point they are very easy to use and maintain, if you should ever want to change a gobo out you can do so with ease. As far as volunteer use goes it is very easy fixture to train people to use. It doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of features, but on the other hand it features are not lacking. It is just the right mix of versatility, ease-of-use, and power-packed features. For the mediumsize church out there that is looking to do concerts or liven up their praise and worship service, this is the fixture for you. It will look great in a venue from 500 to 3,000 seats.
For the church that needs a moving light to project some texture behind the speaker to add some excitement to the set, this is the light for you. With its 17 total gobos and a rotating prism, you should be able to come up with just the right texture to project on your set. Martin has really hit a home run in my opinion. Expect to see these fixtures out on my tours and special events.
