Jon T Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 Hey, our school is hiring out 2x moving heads and we have a choice between the mac 250 or 300. I have never used these fixtures so thefore I do not know wich is better. We are doing a dance show lasting 3 nights. Any advice on what to choose would be great. cheersjon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominicgross Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 Get some robes instead: the same price with a MUCH better performance. But if you don't want to do that, you need to work out what you need more: a nice wash of colour or gobos... Bear in mind you wont get much out of either of the macs if you are running a <1K rig. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 They are very different fixtures. The 250 is a hard-edge spot - gobos, prism effects, that sort of thing. The 300 is a soft-edge wash fixture - it won't project patterns, but the area where it scores over the 250 is that it has full CMY colour mixing, against the 250's 12 fixed colours (plus white). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon T Posted January 18, 2004 Author Share Posted January 18, 2004 Thanx for the info guys. I originally wanted to go with Robe but then head of drama said we had 2 choose out of these 2 fixtures because the school had an acount with the hire company + the fact thats all they had in. I wanted the robe 250. ahh well.....macs are still very good. cheersjon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaun Foster Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 One thing that we have found with mac 300's is that, with quite a low grid height (5ish m) they aren't quite wide enough and quite a few are needed to wash the whole stage. Although the frost does help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 I'd personally go for the Mac 300s, you could probably get some really nice moody effects - with the 300s you can go up to 35º with the frost in, which means providing your stage isn't too big you should get a reasonable coverage. Or there is an additional lens which will take you upto 57º (67º w/frost) but with a good light drop output. What desk you running this all on? Anyway, good luck with the show n' all!Stu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Techno_Monkey Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 One thing that we have found with mac 300's is that, with quite a low grid height (5ish m) they aren't quite wide enough Yeah I know the problem! A while ago I would have said go with the 250's, however after playing a little with the 300's I have found that you can make some dam funky effects out of them. I think that you should seriously think whether or not you use movers at all. They take A LOT longer to program (especially if you have not used them before?) and can take a while getting your head around them and the desk. How long prior to the event would you have them for? as this could seriously effect programming time. Also movers are not the easiest of lights to blag a show with!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon T Posted January 18, 2004 Author Share Posted January 18, 2004 We are running the whole show on "Freddy the obese frog" (fat frog)** laughs out loud **. We are hiring the movers for the whole week. get them on a monday, show is on weds,thus,fri....Thats 2 days to play around and get to know them rly. How hard are the 250's to programme? cheersjon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 How hard are the 250's to programme?No more difficult, and no easier, than any other moving light. You can download the manual from this link - it has all the info you need re. the DMX channel allocations and values. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon T Posted January 18, 2004 Author Share Posted January 18, 2004 We have DMX scanners etc so your saying it shouldnt be much more difficult to programme the mac's than programming a scanner? cheersjon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 Well only the fact you have to make sure you don't get into a situation where you've confused the Pan (as you can be in the same place twice as the fixtures go through about 550º on the Pan) - so you could have a situation where a Pan going from one side of the stage to the other could go through a full 360º + whatever else is required! The best thing is to plot from a 50/50 pan/tilt. So each time you plot a new scene, your working from the same home point, and then your less likely to get dodgy movements from the lights. Not explained all that well I know, but PM me if you want to ask more.HTHStu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 Stu's pretty much summed it up. The main difference between programming scanners and moving heads is the way you need to approach pan and tilt - the larger pan range on a moving head means you can have two (or even, at the extreme ends of travel with some fixtures, three) pan positions which will put the light in the same place depending on what your tilt value is. If you happen to get it wrong on some of your fixtures, and they travel from one focus point to another via a route that's not the one you were aiming for, chances are this is the reason - it's usualy called a "flipped focus". It can be avoided, as Stu suggests, by starting from a 50/50 position when you build any new focus palettes, and by following the "tilt first" rule. If you find yourself in a fix, any decent moving light console will have a "flip" key which will pan the selected fixture by 180 degrees and tilt it from its current angle on one side of vertical to the same angle on the other side (so that it points at the same place, but from the other end of its positional travel, if you see what I mean). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vinny baby Posted January 18, 2004 Share Posted January 18, 2004 hmm, this was a nightmare, when I first started working with moving heads, and it took me ages, to figure out the movement, and I could not understand why, my heads, were not all following route, and this is yes because of the over pan. like the chaps said, always start from the preset, (50/50) and you will find that all the heads, will follow each other, and most important they will be faster, at moving to the next cue, because they are not moving from 0% im lucky in the fact that my lighting desk, has auto preset, so as soon as I enter programming modes, the heads always move to preset (50/50), and I build from that. once you have played around with, the movement you can then start to look at colours, gobos ect. Im sure most LX pros, on here will advise you on some simple design, techniques, as I will also advise, if asked. vince Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac500 Posted January 19, 2004 Share Posted January 19, 2004 Jon, I personally would go with the 250's rather then the 300's because if you've got a conventional rig aswell you can do the wash's with whatever your using. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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