Cameo lights up Palace of Westminster for coronation

Lighting designer David Bishop utilised 74 Cameo ZENIT W600 LED Wash Lights to illuminate the Palace of Westminster in London to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III on 6 May.

The 250m facade of the home of the UK’s parliament was uplit up in red, white and blue.

The IP65-rated ZENIT W600 fixtures – which were supplied by rental company Version 2 Lights – were set at a beam angle of 18° by Bishop and Gaffer Matthew Zelmanowicz.

Version2 Lights previously provided hundreds of Cameo fixtures for Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee in 2022, including the ZENIT W600, and illuminated both the open-air stage and Buckingham Palace for the Party at the Palace.

“The Zenit W600 was the obvious choice,” said Bishop. “Its power, reliability and IP rating combine to produce stunning colours on any chosen canvas. In particular, the punch of the white chip in the W600 suited this application, as we needed to ensure the naturally warm stone of the palace translated into pure white – to make the traditional red, white and blue associated with the UK. The colour consistency across individual units is great too; even when white was mixed with some blue, each unit in this setting was identical.”
 
Simon Perrot, Version 2’s account manager, said: “The ZENIT W600 boasts an impressive output and has come into its own on some of our larger outside broadcast productions.

“We see these fixtures appearing on more and more kit lists from leading television lighting directors, such as David Bishop. The W600 has rapidly become a dependable workhorse fixture for both studio and location work.”