Anyone who has worked a Kiwi summer festival knows the drill: blazing sun at load-in, sideways drizzle by the headliner. For years the answer was cling film, tarps and prayer. The current generation of IP-rated fixtures makes all of that obsolete — and the economics are better than they look.
What IP65 actually buys you
An IP65 rating means sealed against dust and against water jets from any direction. In production terms: the show does not stop for weather, nobody climbs truss in the rain to bag fixtures, and — the part people miss — the same sealing keeps out the dust, insect life and haze fluid residue that quietly kill indoor fixtures doing outdoor work. IP-rated units simply last longer, wherever you use them.
Weatherproof movers at both ends of the budget
The Intimidator Spot 360X IP brings fully weatherproof moving-head spots into regional-festival budgets — gobos, colour and prism included. At the production-company tier, the Rogue Outcast series delivers the arena-grade output that toured on the shows we wrote about in our Netsky Black Box coverage.
Not just beams: theatre-quality light, outside
Outdoor Shakespeare, carols in the park, marquee weddings — soft, beautiful front light used to be the first casualty of an outdoor venue. The Ovation REVE F-3 IP fresnel and its ellipsoidal sibling are genuine theatre fixtures in weatherproof housings. Pair them with an IP-rated hazer like the AmHaze Stadium 2X IP and the full indoor toolkit works under open sky.
The maths for hire companies
An IP fixture costs more up front and earns it back three ways: it hires for outdoor jobs its indoor sibling must refuse, it skips the labour of covering and drying gear, and it depreciates slower because weather sealing is also dirt sealing. If your hire stock is due for renewal, it is worth running the numbers with us before defaulting to indoor units.
Browse the range Ask us about this gear
Product imagery courtesy of our partners at MDR Lighting, New Zealand distributor for Chauvet and ChamSys.