Don Allen

I bought some G4 LED lamps to try as step lights for retractable seating, but they were too long compared to the Philips 12V 10W G4 halogen lamps fitted and had narrower pin spacing. Had to stick to the Philips as the lamp bases were positioned so the top of the lamp was up against the slotted faceplate. You will need to check the focal point of your reflector if you are going to put them into birdies.

The Lee filters book The Art Of Light is worth downloading as a useful reference. In the colour range section it has Transmission data and the effect/colour is useful.

A Parnell lens for that PAR64 look and anything RGB behind it.

Dynalite do a range of Compact lighting dimmers including a wall mount DLE1203 12 x 3A and DIN rail mount DDLE801 8 x 1A dimmers. These pop up on auction sites, but the ones available are not a bargain. Look for DIN rail versions. Some Dynatile dimmers such as the Studio 12 are 0 - 10V analogue control inputs.

Both are 650W. Earlier Blue Room Post Ian Ferguson said "The difference is the filament design. The T26 is a monoplane filament, all of the wires are in the same plane. The T27 is a biplane filament, the wires run in front of and behind a single plane alternately, the reason for this was to decrease the width of the filament to produce a more compact source of light. In my experience there is little difference when these lamps are used in fresnels or PCs, but there can be advantages if you use T27's in profiles, especially with gobos."

In Perth, Western Australia it is Jaycar SB1760 CR-2430 3V PCB Mount Lithium Battery , there will be a local version for you. You can cut the old battery terminals off, desolder the pins, then solder in the new one. There is a smaller version as well. Main thing is the three pins for a horizontal mount.

This is a link to a picture scenery truck made in the WAAPA production workshops WAAPA Truck. They made the tri coasters in house to reduce costs, there is enough capacity in the compressed air tanks for a show, the cast or crew operate the air valve on the side of the truck.

What visual effect do you want ? All on steady white Running a chase so every third one on or off Using a single coloured bulb or alternating colours or having RGB LED golfball size bulbs ? You choice will be influenced by budget, directors choice, complexity of wiring. You can also ask this question on Control Booth.https://www.controlbooth.com/

If you are looking for an 8 degree beam angle that puts it into the extra narrow spot led category. A commercial option is the Lumenbeam LBX Colour Changing led fitting that comes in 4 degree RGB or RGBW versions.

This is a link to the RGBW 12W LED PAR that I purchased initially to use as 12V lights with wireless DMX for a lily float for an outdoor ballet, but their beamwidth was too narrow. The light is fanless due to the low power rating. It has since been put to use for many other tasks as the colour fringing has not been a problem. This is a link to the 3oW RGB UV COB LED PAR that I bought two samples as they seemed too good to be true. It only drew 6W at full power and had non insulated pins on the mains plug so not AU plug.Closer inspection revealed that the earth wire was cut off inside the light but light did not have a double insulated symbol so failed PAT. The switch mode power supply was 14W so could not supply 30W. The COB led was actually a 4in1 LED with 4 emitters. But it was fanless so quiet. In general for fanless types, I buy IP65 rated LED PAR's. It means they generally come with waterproof tails, but they are now appearing with Powercon True1 for mains and XLR 3 pin DMX.

The beam angle of the led tape should be your primary focus as you probably want about 45 degrees and as most led tape is about 120 degrees you are going to lose a lot of light going into areas where it is not needed. AS the tape is being mounted behind the trees as a sidelight, you could look at 12V DMX led strip lights as the lens will give you a brighter result. If you have the time to build the units yourself, you can make them cheaper and more compact, but it will take a lot of time. Another alternative are the small RGBW plastic fanless led pars as they are cheap and some run off 12V. The ones I use have a HW-10.5V1A switch mode power supply,so should be able to run off 12V, but a 12V battery can be 13V so you need to be cautious. Be apity to have to use a voltage regulator and waste battery capacity. They have 3x1WR, 3x1WG, 3x1WB, 3x1WW leds so there is colour fringing but it is a budget light that has been used as footlights, wall uplights and LesMis barricade special. It has been advertised as 3W led versions but they might not be genuine 3W.

The 100W led profile weighs 7kg because the housing is extruded aluminium. I have several 200W 6in1 led zoom profiles that weigh 12kg, but a friend has a 150W RGBW led profile that weights 7kg as it has mainly plastic body. Even that companies 200W RGBW led profiles are 7kg.

Depending on which led fixture you buy, you will be able to print a plastic gobo using slide transparencies, Pro Design Lighting has a How to make a plastic gobo , the Selecon link is not available as Philips appear to have abandoned all Selecon documentation. Do a search on Blue Room and Control Booth lighting forums as there is a lot of posts covering gobos.

Look at wall washers or uplights for effective mood lighting, instead of just lighting the whole area with a colour. The artist will tend to blend into the background.Have a read of this Mood Lighting article.

They would not provide an accurate colour image of the art piece due to the narrow spectral colours of the led emitters, which means the person looking at the art piece will not see its true colours, when viewed in daylight. But cheap led par's could be an ecconomical means of colouring of an artistic piece, however the art piece will change colours with other light sources present, such as daylight.

I use a 6m DJ style lighting truss behind the drummer with 6 18x12W led par's on it for backlight for a lot of the shows I do , as a similar look to PAR 64's. Can only take lightweight movers, I use 2 Hosen BeeEyes that are 19x12W 4in1 that weigh 8KG. I usually focus 2 led's on the drummer and the other 4 on the rest of the band. I have 6 5KG shot bags on the legs for extra stability.

After seeing their Example addressing, I thought that because switch 10 had to be on for DMX, you just subtracted 1 from the DMX address to set the dip switches, with 10 on. But that is not the case. I went back to the theatre today and tried setting a DMX address of 193 and 194, but the smoke machine would not accept either address. The only DMX addresses that would work were their listed examples as I tested them. I gave up and ran it at DMX address 001 as we could free that up.

I came across a beamZ S1500 smoke machine, serial number POB13590 yesterday and it did not respond to DMX when trying to use the dip switches, got some random results. After extensive testing to try and get it going, using a conventional desk and DMX tester I found the smoke machine could only respond to DMX channels 001 using dip switch settings 1xxxxxxxx0 or 002 using dip switch settings 1xxxxxxxx1. The x is don't care, could be 1 or 0. Different to the original post of DMX address 032. Definitely a smoke machine to advise people not to buy or return for a refund. It may have responded to other dip switch combinations, I was using a 96 channel desk for quick checks.

You need to have a voltage monitor put on the incoming mains to log voltage levels, any spikes or outages. This should be done by the supply authority but they do not not like to admit liability. During construction works, you need a procedure put in place to isolate power to LED fixtures and anything else succeptible in your theatre. Try and contact the suppliers of the external LED fixtures as they would not like their product reputation being damages by poor mains and may offer you support or help organise mains voltage monitoring which needs to be logged.

There is a need to clearly identify stage lighting outlets in Australia, because we use the same 3 pin plug for power and lighting. There used to be a convention of using round earth pin sockets for lighting as lighting had a different tarrif or price, but that is no longer done. What people refer to as a 10A socket or power point has 16A rated components inside, so the only noticeable difference between a 10A and a 15A socket is the wider earth pin, as our earth pins are designed to handle 2.5 times the rating of the active conductor, to ensure that the circuit protective device, which could be a fuse or circuit breaker, disconnects the load in a fault situation. Australia does not have fused plugs and rarely will you see a fuse in a conventional stage lighting fixture. I Australian theatres the lighting sockets are not usually switched, or use auto switching sockets in some installations. When a standard power point is used, there is a risk that the switch is left off so the outlet will not work and has to be accessed to switch it on. The lighting outlets should have a circuit number on them to identify the lighting socket so it can be patched into a dimmer or hard power. Jands lighting bar It is up to the theatre to clearly identify what circuit is patched into a dimmer or hard power, this is usually done with a patching schedule, which can be soft patching on a lighting desk as there are several brands of combination dimmed and power distribution units made and sold in Australia. The list of lighting equipment that can be damaged by powering it from a dimmer include LED's, moving head lights, scanners, effects lights with switch mode power supplies. As to why anyone would want to do such a thing, answers include lack of training, lack of supervision, lack of exclusion of the public from dimmer rooms and lighting catwalks and facebook. There is a lot of misinformation and antisocial attitude on the facebook lighting pages I have looked at.

There is a 4 channel trailing edge dimmer available in the UK but I have no idea of pricing. Seems to be designed with cinemas as it has panic switch mode.

PLPROFILE1 3 channel mode is Ch1 intensity, Ch2 preset colour selection, Ch3 is timing. There are 25 preset colours and 6 custom colours, so you will need to make your own colours in the 6 custom presets. user manual.

You should remove any link between the XLR shell and pin 1 to avoid hum loops when using audio cable on a budget installation. When using audio cables for DMX use a terminator as it shows up any cable problems.

I suggest you make a scale, usually 1:25 side elevation, end elevation and plan of the stage and balcony. This will allow you to divide the stage into six acting areas, mid stage and upstage, the the floor in front of the stage as downstage. Use a protractor to draw lines out at 45 degrees from the centre of your six stage areas on the side elevation and plan. Where these lines intersect with the balcony will be the ideal positions, but probably not practical positions for your lights. The McCandless method places lights at 45 degrees either side of the acting position and 45 degrees up from the acting position, which is why you need a side elevation and plan. Looking at the picture, this would give you four small lighting bar positions, where the outside lights intersect with the balcony. On these small lighting bars would be the three lights for focussing across the stage. The angles will not be optimal for the centre and far side lights, but you will achieve better face lighting. Seperation of stage areas will be difficult. It would be ideal if the small lighting bars could be as high as possible, but you will probably not be allowed to put them under the handrail, which is where a lot of heritage listed theatres had them installed when the theatres were built. An example of a heritage listed theatre with balcony lighting bars is Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne. This link to Stanley McCandless has a diagram to show what I am describing.

Interesting to read the Wikipedia entry for Source Four PAR "The Source Four PAR is a stage lighting instrument manufactured by Electronic Theatre Controls. The name of the fixture derives from the stylistic and construction features it shares with ETC's Source Four. The suffix identifies the Source Four PAR as a parabolic aluminized reflector (PAR). It is designed and marketed as a modern, energy efficient alternative to traditional PAR fixtures used in theatrical and broadcast lighting"