Lighting equipment advice

[daniel.anderson]

Hi all!

 

I am currently looking at starting up my own little collection of lighting equipment, on a fairly tight budget.

 

And I am torn between getting normal conventional fixtures (which can be easily sub hired from a company in my area for chips), a few dimmers and either a ETC Express 250 or a higher end desk with more control channels.

 

-or-

 

Getting a desk, either a ETC Express 250 or a higher end desk with more control channels, and some moving head/mirror fixtures (currently looking at the Mac 250 Krypton's).

 

As I am based in Australia, equipment isn't exactly super cheap, and I have been browsing second hand stuff from the solaris network and similar sites.

 

I am asking for your opinions on this ordeal that I'm having. :ph34r:

 

Any and all input would be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance.

 

Cheers,

Daniel

[LeeStoddart]

Daniel, This type of question has been discussed several times in various forms and the advice generally comes down to "don't buy movers, conventionals are a better bet" But we are usually talking to someone in a school environment and advise them to invest in conventionals first and hire movers when justified.

 

For your question you need to consider what are you going to do with the kit. If it's for your personal amusement/training in your private theatrical space then go ahead do what you like. If however you intend to offer the kit to other groups or venues then you need to consider what is the demand that you would be able to satisfy, how much would the customer be prepared to pay and how much does it cost you to buy and maintain the stock.

 

If you are looking at this kit as a commercial investment then knowing the market is the main thing, but also understanding the cost of ownership is important.

 

The general wisdom is that maintenance of moving lights is a significant expense (and a certain amount of skill is involved) and at the least time consuming. If you are considering buying second hand you run a much higher risk of having problems the more complex the equipment is. Parcans and Fresnels - how much can go wrong, Profiles - more likely to have problems with the optics,. Movers - many opportunities for problems.

[prolightdesigner]

Hi

 

The answer to your question really comes down to what your budget is and what the system's primary use would be. Conventional fixtures are nice because you can get many for the price of just one moving light. Moving lights do have more features, but require a lot of support. As mentioned, moving lights require a fair amount of maintenance and generally cost more to operate, not to mention that moving heads can get quite heavy, which then require a trussing system to mount versus a simple tripod for a few PARcans.

 

My advice (though I don't know what the system is going to be used for) would be to start with maybe 8 - 16 PAR 64s or similar and then add a few movers as needed. The ETC Express 250 is a decent board and has enought channels to run a handful of moving lights. True, it lacks the nice moving light programming features like pallettes, but includes enough so that you can program a nice show.

 

-Jeff

[woody74]

Without knowing why you plan on going this direction, I'll just say that if you do go the movers route, avoid the Express line. It will work, sure, but it is no GrandMA (your favorite desk according to your profile).

 

And while we're at it, I'll ask the question Jeff hinted at above: why? Why do you want your "own little collection of lighting equipment"?

 

-w

[berry120]

As others have said, if you're just getting it to muck around, experiment and play for a bit then go ahead and get what you think you'll have the most fun with, it doesn't really matter!

 

However if you're getting stuff in the hope you'll hire it out or for regular use other than just playing around, I'd go down the generics route.

- Cheaper, and you say you're on a fairly tight budget

- Easier to maintain, the most that's likely to go wrong with a parcan is a blown bulb, you can fix that (I hope!) A mac of any description has a LOT more to go wrong in it, most of which you probably wouldn't have a clue how to fix. This will be a bigger concern if you're going down the second hand route

- Much easier to get a replacement quickly and cheaply if a generic packs up

- Easier to use generics

 

But as woody said... we really need to know why / what you're using the equipment for before we can comment for definite!

[timmeh]

Hi

 

Whilst I agree with most of the points raised, something like a MAC250 Krypton doesn't require very much maintainance at all. It is modular and designed to come apart easily for cleaning. Blowing the fans out and occaisonally lubing the bearings is easily done.

 

However any other head falls straight into the 'experts only' category. God help you if you went and got something like MAC500s with their 'look at them funny and they break' feature or Varilite VL2000s with their overheating problem.

 

An ETC Express is not the sort of desk you would want to control any modern moving light, however.

 

All the best

Timmeh

[JDP]

This is a problem that comes up time after time. IF you want to do this seriously, then spend proper money, otherwise save everyone a headache and hire.

`

When you say budget, what is it, exactly?

[pauldub]

As mentioned, it really comes down to what you are using the gear for and what is going to make its money back the most.

 

Im down in Sydney and have a decent amount of gear.

 

Out of everything I probably make more money of par cans. They pretty much go out on every job and whilst $10 a hire isn't much, it only took about 6 or 7 hires to pay off and now they just make money. (except when a globe blows)

 

A kyrpton in Australia goes out for about $150 per day list price. they cost about $5k to buy. So you will need 33 hires it pay it off.

 

If you can afford to buy the movers and you have the work then they will pay off more in the long run. But if your only hiring them out a few times a month then its probably not worth it.

 

Whilst I have a fair amount of gear I have chosen not to buy movers at this stage and invested into a RoadHog instead. This way my crew and I become efficient on the one desk, and it has opened up other areas of work as a op/ld with desk to other companies.