buying new lights

[tomchennells]

guys slap me please if I miss the point of this thread but as soon as the word cheap was mentioned I instantly thort small floods - teatro wetlights or similar with 500w lamps and barndoors will give you very cheap top light and u can put four on a channel comfortably - therefore giving u lots of potential topwash colours - 16 or 20 should do the job for your whole stage's toplight - but yeh another couple of codas will deffinatly help your facelight situation

 

bear in mind u can also flash the wetlights into oblivion and the lamps are pence!

 

"tom prepares for slapping but hopes u may see where he is coming from"

 

Tom

[Stu]

Allow me to say that floods really aren't the best thing for controlled lighting sources... The only time you'd consider using floods, in my humble opinion, is for lighting cycs, groundrows and perhaps to bash some light through a window.

 

Taking into consideration all the needs the original poster has for her space, and therefore her lighting rig, floods just simply wouldn't cut it for a multi purpose space.

 

The best thing is to spend the money wisely, and buying a load of floods wouldn't be a wise purchase. The best thing I think to get would be some more 1k Fresnels and some Zoom Profiles.

 

In my opinion of course!

[tomchennells]

yeh point taken - but thoose little floods can be very usefull for toplight on a budget I have used them many times and got top notch results

 

on one of my shows I flew in tri-truss on strops for toplight and had 10 wetlights on it all with barndoors 3 in red 3 in blue 4 in face colour if I recall corectly, and on my facelight bar I had 3 1k fresnels open and I barely needed any coloured face light just two pairs of cct minuettes because the floods did the job!!! - if I knew how to work this thing properly id post a picture - im not great with pc's!!

 

but anyway it looked really good and the colour mixtures I could create just from the red and blue was quite impressive :(

 

but there probably not suitable for something u want to change every week and not the most flexible things in the world - allthough they do never die ! -

 

how about cct minuettes while I mention them - as somene said earlier u cant really have to many fresnels im sure u could get some second hand ones good to light one area of the stage with a nice soft edge and they're easy to focus without creating any hotspots (as most fresnels are)

 

anyway ill be quiet before I say anything too contraversial

 

hope u get the effect your after :** laughs out loud **:

 

 

Tom

[Stu]

There were some 1k Starlette's going on Ebay the other week for £80-90 for 2 which is a bit of a bargain in my opinion. Certainly worth a look...

 

Stu

[gareth]

another couple of codas will deffinatly help your facelight situation

No!! Read previous posts properly before going off at half-#### in reply to them.

 

The suggestion of additional Coda 3's was solely to help with achieving a decent, smooth wash across a cyc or cloth - Jo's current stock of three units isn't really sufficient for a nice smooth wash across anything but the narrowest of cloths. Codas do NOT do 'facelight', as you call it!

 

As Stu has already said, floods of any description are only really of any use for lighting cloths, backings, and where a big, more-or-less-uncontrollable spread of light is required. Using them for any sort of acting area light is a big no-no - you just can't get the control on the beam to stop them spilling into loads of places where they shouldn't go. If you're happy with your use of 'wetlights' as a top wash, then great - but you should be aware that they're probably the most inappropriate type of stage lantern that you could possibly imagine for this purpose, and that there are other types of kit out there which are far more use for this kind of application.

[tomchennells]

oopps soz guys - ur right I rushed typing the bit about the codas and talked utter bullshit

 

I just try and go with what looks good and I have found that floods with barndoors on low celing applications can work for toplight, I would never consider them in a high celing theatre but were talking low here, I know other people who use them for this too :(

 

soz just saying what I have seen work on alot of shows before

 

:** laughs out loud **: tom

[tomchennells]

for future refrence on my next shows..

what would you recomend instead of wetlights if they are the most unsuitable in a low celing application for several colours of topwash what is the best ?

 

thanks tom

[gareth]

what would you recomend instead of wetlights if they are the most unsuitable in a low celing application for several colours of topwash what is the best ?

How low, exactly? (i.e. height from stage floor to lighting bars)

[paulears]

concur a million percent with everyone who's advised against floods of aany sort for lighting people, let alone garden types that have horrible uneven fields with ugly edges.

 

I note Behringer are producing what look like S4Par clones at about £50 inc the lenese - at this price break a few would work well. and the wider beam angle at low rigging heights could be useful.

 

I've got some working Patt 49's hidden away somewhere - nearly had to dig some out today when the hardwired house light dimmer failed. Installed by a local contractor, they have rotary encoders for up and down rather than pots - and they stopped working. spinning the wheel just made the houselights pulse up and down - no brand on them, God knows where they came from.

[tomchennells]

the lowest ive used them in is about 7 and a half feet ! upto around 15- 16

 

isit still a no no this low ?

 

I really genuinely thort they were ok to use they are theatre spec and seem to give off a nice even wash

[gareth]

the lowest ive used them in is about 7 and a half feet ! upto around 15- 16

 

isit still a no no this low ?

With your bars at 7.5', the lanterns are going to be mere inches above the heads of the tallest actors. Not only are you not going to get a decent wash from anything at this height (let alone floods!), you're going to have some pretty hot and uncomfortable actors too!

 

At the other end of the scale, with bars at around 16', you can happily use fresnels to get a really nice even top-light wash - the number you'll need to use depends on the size of your stage and how tightly you want to be able to split it up into areas.

[tomchennells]

ok thanks - I will steer clear of the floods for future performances - so let me get this straight there mainly good for - cyc wash, audience light and sticking in your garden to light up bushes yeh ? (oh and detering the odd burgular)

 

so why on earth do they make barndoors - just for cyc washes ??

 

am I still ok using these to flash colour or is that a no go area too ?

 

thanks for your help - tom

[paulears]

ok - what is happening is that you're lighting by results - you have used them, and like what they do for you. That's great - that's what designers do! The snag, as I see it, is that if you had used lanterns with lenses, the 'quality' of light would have been better. If you compare theatre with tv this makes some sense. There, it's quite common to have a key light with a lense, usually a fresnel. Then they use a special type of lantern that they call a softlight - essentially a large flood, but usually designed so that the actual tubular lamp is not seen from the front, just its light, reflected from a large reflector. This gives a nice soft light, great for filling in some of the shadows the key created. This soft light works well for tv, but is rarely used in theatre - we're quite used to harder shadows - after all, the audience isn't in the perfect place, well, at least not all of 'em!

 

So - your design looked great - but would almost certainly have been more dramatic with better 'quality' light.

The effect of an actor walking into a profile or fresnel produced beam of light is much more special than walking into a puddle from a flood. This is what makes theatrical lighting different to architectural lighting - although these two are getting closer all the time.

 

I've got a Studio Due City colour blasting over 2K of discharge light at a ceiling in a Grade 2 building going through lovely shades of pink , magenta and red - it's very, very bright - but totally boring!

 

as for the height - as long as people don't burn if they stand under them, it's ok - but 7ft does seem very low to use any sort of conventional theatre style lantern - usually the beam spread isn't enough.

 

hope this helps

paul

[tomchennells]

thanks I think what I should try and do (as you suggest) is get out of my fixed ways and expand try some new things

I often think face light and top light then add the specials but maybe I could do something a bit more special with the facelight and toplight itself ?? as a pose to just using birdees movers and profiles to give the piece its spice ??

 

yes that celing is very very low the venue is an all girls school dealing in dance and drama mainly hence the actresses and dancers arnt actully that tall in the main, maybe 7and a half was an exaduration but it cant be much more because I am 6ft1" and can focus a 500w fresnel from the ground comfortably possibly 8ft

 

is there a set ratio for top light to face light in generall whilst designing a systym?? I normally put about 500-700w above stage for every 1k out front (approx)

 

 

tom

[gareth]

Tom, I fear that this discussion is in danger of going around and around in never-ending circles. I'd suggest you do two things ...

 

1. Get yourself a copy of a decent lighting text, like Francis Reid's "Stage Lighting Handbook". This will give you a picture of the differences between the various types of lantern, what they each do, what purposes they might be best suited to, and how you might best employ them in your lighting design.

 

2. Try to get yourself some time in your drama studio or theatre which you can use just to experiment with different types of lights. Rig a bar of floods as a top-light, and get someone to walk around underneath them while you look at the effect they have. Then try the same thing with a bar of fresnels. Then try adding some backlight. Then take the backlight away and add some sidelight. Then try a different type of fixture as backlight, etc. etc. The best way to get an idea of the quality of light that comes out of each of the fixtures at your disposal is to try it for yourself, and take note of what you see. Asking questions on a forum like this is OK up to a point, but when the whole discussion starts to cover the same ground over and over again its usefulness diminishes rapidly.