Lighting the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre

The Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre (SCEC), Australia's largest and most successful venue for conferences, exhibitions and special events, is in the midst of major upgrades and refurbishments.

The Centre's Ballroom is Sydney's largest dedicated, purpose-built ballroom accommodating up to 1000 diners which breaks down to a hundred tables of ten. The Ballroom opened in 1998 when moving mirror lights were installed to act as individual lights for each table. By 2005 it was time to find an alternative light and so Paul Davison, SCEC’s Audio Visual Services Manager, and his team began the hunt for the ideal replacement.

Extensive research into what products were available followed. The team liked the idea of going for a moving yoke rather than a moving mirror as they needed a fixture that gave them a variety of options to meet market demand.

The team knew that the Martin brand has significant standing in the lighting community and they were very impressed by the punch and brightness of the Martin MAC 250 Entour. They also liked their robustness, an important criterion as they rarely use all 100 tables and so the remaining fixtures have to be hardy enough to travel to other venues in the complex.

A total of 100 Martin MAC 250 Entours were purchased from Chameleon Professional Lighting Sales with distribution through Martin’s Australian representative, Show Technology. Eighty are currently mounted permanently in the roof which holds a DMX network while twenty travel around the building.

The dB rating of the fans was important and the quietness of the Entours was a major selling point. Although the ballroom can have ninety or more of these units switched on at any given time, the resulting noise is amazingly minor.

The technicians at the SCEC also love the versatility of the Entours, as far as the panning and tilting of the moving head, and the minimal distortion that they deliver. When at full pan the amount of distortion you get out of the optics is minimal.

The Entours are positioned between 4.2 and 4.8 meters in the air so when they hit the table, the punch is reportedly phenomenal.