Feb 4 2009
Lithuania’s Vilnius joins Austria’s Linz as Europe’s cultural capital in 2009. To celebrate this event properly but also the Baltic city’s millennium, Gert Hof has staged an impressive show of light, neon and pyrotechnics with the help of OSRAM lamps. Over 500,000 spectators marvelled at the 20-minute spectacle to the sound of classical music at St Stanislav Cathedral at the New Year.
For this event lighting artist Gert Hof chose OSRAM halogen HMI 2500W metal halide lamps (35 altogether) and 80 HTI 1200W plus 65 XBO 7000W short arc xenon lamps.
HMI and HTI lamps are mainly used in entertainment lighting. HMI lamps provide high luminous efficiency of up to 100lm/W plus the highest colour rendering values and are therefore often used to light film and TV studios where the quality of the light is very important. HMI lamps achieve a colour temperature of 6000K akin to daylight, colour rendering of over 90 and are especially colour-stable. One of their distinguishing features is a hot-restart capability which allows them to be used flexibly.
The main attribute of HTI lamps is their luminance which helps especially in gathering and directing light. It is why most modern lighting effects devices use HTI lamps. Devices can be designed smaller and lighter as their high luminance can boost light output without increasing the lamp’s power consumption.
OSRAM HMI and HTI lamps are available both single and double-ended. The common single-ended HMI lamps have an external bulb, which makes the lamps more robust with regards to environmental conditions.
HTI lamps are available in single and hot-restart-capable double-ended versions. Depending on the application and lamp they achieve colour temperatures between 5600 and 8000K.
The OSRAM XBO lamps also used in Vilnius have a colour temperature of around 6000K with spectral distribution akin to daylight. Like HMI and HTI lamps they are also distinguished by excellent colour rendering and exceptionally high luminance. All XBO lamps are hot-restart-capable.
Besides the lamps Gert Hof used for his light show in Vilnius, OSRAM has numerous other products available which offer the right solution in the entertainment field for whatever directors, stage designers, disco operators or architects require in terms of sophisticated lighting.
In 2007 the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presented OSRAM with the Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for outstanding development in HMI technology.