LASER BANDING TESTS

Being proud owners of three KVANT 7W lasers, we try to take advantage of them as much as possible. We have been super inspired lately to try new tricks and techniques with them. For fun, we tried to mimic the effect used for the Childish Gambino performance on SNL awhile back to use for new projects.

For the experiment, Joey Morello and I rigged one of the lasers overhead pointing down as much as possible. While Joey programmed various laser shapes, I set up our Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera. It took quite awhile to get the effect dialed in, with a combination of the adjusting the laser scan rate in the Pangolin Beyond laser software and the shutter angle in the camera.

The effect is only visible in-camera. By changing the shutter angle to the odd number 11.4 degrees and slowing the laser scan rate as low as it could go, we achieved the look we were going for, basically freezing light beams in the air. I only wish this was viewable by the eye, as it’s such a great effect. Our idea is to utilize this effect for high-end music videos, sports pre-game shows and more.

Do you have a need for lasers? Come visit us for a demo.

Author: Brian Dressel