All Martin Professional lighting products default to a smooth dimmer curve that is ideal for most situations. However, there may be instances where you wish to match the dimming abilities of other products such as cyc lights or incandescent lamps, or you just prefer a different path. All current Martin Professional products include the ability to select between four different dimming curves from either the menu system or DMX. With DMX, you can actually change the dimming curve on a cue-by-cue basis! Lets look at the various options:
Linear - provides an even distribution of light in correlation to the DMX level of the dimmer channel(s). Although mathematically uniform, this dimmer curve is often not the most desired by lighting designers.
S-Curve - provides a finer control at lower and higher levels while being more coarse at medium levels. This dimming curve best emulates a typical incandescent lamp's dimming abilities. This is also the default and often considered the most natural dimming curve.
Square Law - provides a finer control at low levels and coarser at high levels. Useful for low level scenes and chases as more DMX values are allocated for dimming at the bottom end.
Inverse Square Law - provides a finer control at high levels and coarser at low levels. Useful when not dimming all the way out or when less low level control is desired (snap on/off).
Often it is best to ensure that your lighting console is properly crossfading the dimming channel(s) in a linear fashion. Otherwise there may be conflicts between how the console is fading and how the light is responding. It is also important that all your fixtures are set to the desired dimming curve. A good practice is to set all fixtures to the factory defaults when starting a new show. Then make changes in the menu or via DMX as needed. Otherwise you could end up with some fixtures dimming differently than others. In addition, if you do change the dimmer curve for a particular cue, be sure to set it back to the default in the following cue!
Adjusting the dimmer curve is a very useful tool when applied to specific situations. Martin Professional maintains the same four types of dimmer curves and control abilities across the entire range of Martin Professional products. This ensures simplicity and consistency when using MAC Vipers, MAC Auras, MAC Quantums, or the Atomic 3000 LED.
