Moving head help

[Leeburkill]

I'm looking to buy some moving head lights for a village hall lighting rig. I have a budget around £1200 and would like to buy 3 units. I've look on the internet but am struggling to find information as to which is the best lights to buy in that price range. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Ynot]

Hmmm...

 

You're unlikely to get many people here endorsing the idea of moving heads in a village hall scenario.

 

And £1200 is unlikely to be enough to get a decent quality single mover let alone multiples.

 

Also bear in mind that even a single mover will need to have a suitable power feed to it plus DMX infrastructure (even if that's just cables taped under your barrels).

 

The question to ask yourself is why you want moving heads in this situation?

If you truly do host the sort of gig that might occasionally 'need' them, then you're by FAR best off renting on demand rather than investing in a purchase.

 

And if you do a search here on the BR you will find countless topics advising AGAINST.

 

 

 

[Leeburkill]

I have DMX installed and a zero88 jester lighting desk. The reason I would like to add moving heads is because the performers often come off stage and use other areas in the hall. I know my budget is tight but is there nothing that is of any quality for that price?

[peza2010]

are you looking for a spot or wash?

[Leeburkill]

The lights I have been looking at are from showtec, americandj and imove. But I have no idea if any of them are any good?

 

Spot I think would be more beneficial. I have plenty of wash lighting already

 

Spots I feel would be more beneficial. I have plenty of wash lighting already.

 

I understand that on my budget I'm not going to get professional standard equipment but the effects moving heads will add to the rig I have would be very useful.

They are an enhancement, they are by no means going to be central part of the lighting.

 

Renting isn't really an option, the budget I've been given is a grant from the local council and the comity has decided what they would like to buy. I've been given the task of spending it wisely! :-/

We have a little more money that could be made available but basically, I need to spend in the region of £1200 on 3 moving heads.

[Ynot]

I have DMX installed and a zero88 jester lighting desk. The reason I would like to add moving heads is because the performers often come off stage and use other areas in the hall. I know my budget is tight but is there nothing that is of any quality for that price?

Then I think you're approaching this from entirely the wrong angle.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble and all, but you would be FAR better off spending that £1200 on a handful of decent quality profiles and using them to pick out the areas these performers seem to keep wandering into. That way you then also have a bunch of fixtures that can and will be very useful in other applications on the main stage itself.

 

 

 

 

[Leeburkill]

There is already a reasonable amount of permanent fixtures in the hall for stage coverage. I know that £1200 could enhance that greatly but it's not my decision.

 

Basically I have £1200 to spend on what I've been asked to buy! The hall is used for many different functions not just stage performances. I'm trying to spend it and keep everyone happy. If it were my choice, I'd spend it differently.

[GridGirl]

Is your Jester a JesterML or just the straight up Jester? If it's not the ML, you aren't going to be able to drive movers off it without them using up every single channel on it so you can't control anything else. Plus running movers off a fader desk is no fun at all...

[paulears]

In my venue a couple of years ago I put two movers on the advance truss to do exactly what you said - the performers suddenly leave the stage and stand where there is no light. Great idea but flawed. I took them down after a couple of weeks. The reasons are that follow spots are great to get to somewhere quickly and do that job, but movers are just hopeless at real time control, you end up chasing your tail and by the time you find the performer they move! The other snag is simply performance. Cheap movers, especially the 60 and 90 Watt LEDs appear quite bright, but the cheaper ones get the brightness by being narrow beam width. A few may well have a wide beam angle but they are dimmer, in practice much dimmer. So your main problem is that unless you mount them a way away from the stage, most of the sub £1000 units are good for throwing narrow beams in haze, and useless for lighting a single person. The ones I tried were around 5m from the people on the stage apron and I could light head down to knees, but if they moved left or right they were in the dark. A source 4 on the same bar focused full body was much better.

 

If you want to prove it to yourself, buy some from Thomann, then send them back. It will cost you postage of course, but treat that like a hire fee. Four hundred quid movers have vivid colours, project nice patterns and add interest when they wiggle, but they are hopeless trying to create gobo wash patterns on the floor, and are a bit like trying to light your stage with a follow spot stuck on half body. Spend three grand on one with zoom and you get a bright wide useful light source. They are still rubbish at trying to follow a performer though. Wash lights are better at this, and I've stuck four on the advance truss to do exactly what you are talking about. Cope with people who suddenly drop off the apron and walk along the front row, as it can now light right across. You cannot do this with cheap spots. They're designed to do a very different job.

[top-cat]

Guys, can we not just answer a question. The question was

 

"Can you recommend the best moving heads costing around £400 each please"

Not

 

"Do you think 3 moving heads for £1200 is a good allocation of funds"

Surely some people here must have experience with circa-£400 movers which they can share, rather than just repeating the stock answer of "hire don't buy" which is clearly not compatible with council grants.

 

 

 

It does however slightly hack me off that councils seem so ready to hand out sums of money which seem to be totally disproportionate to the things which they are supposed to fund, the reality of a £1200 grant to a community hall buying movers being that within a year, my bet is that all of them will be in a cupboard because they don't work, nobody knows how to fix them, and nobody is prepared to pay the ridiculous sum for sending them to Outer Mongolia to be fixed under warranty. It just makes no sense to me that old age pensioners are struggling to pay their heating bills in the winter and councils still prefer to give the money away to people who want to spend it on things they don't properly understand that will most likely end up wasted within a short time anyway. Rant over.

[Ynot]

Guys, can we not just answer a question. The question was

 

"Can you recommend the best moving heads costing around £400 each please"

 

Simple answer - not really. because that dilutes the advice given by most who've already posted. Because if someone here says 'Yes - buy these chirpy cheap-cheap movers from XYZ" and the OP then finds they won't work precisely because of the reasons we're citing here then he comes back and says "Well, the BLUE ROOM bods said they would"... :(

Surely some people here must have experience with circa-£400 movers which they can share, rather than just repeating the stock answer of "hire don't buy" which is clearly not compatible with council grants.

Whilst I'm not sure from the OP that this IS a council grant, as opposed to a pot of money identified by the committee or otherwise running the village hall, I think it's irrelevant where it IS coming from. To the OP, and with the greatest of respect, you are spending community funds and therefore have a responsibility to spend them wisely. And if that means questioning whoever has said 'Buy us 3 moving heads' because of the reasons given here already, then so be it.

 

So coming back to that original question

"Can you recommend the best moving heads costing around £400 each please"

the blunt answer is (and has been given as) a qualified and supported 'No'. You came to the BR and we've respectfully and politely given you some reasons why, and there are MANY more reasons which have been discussed here before ad nauseam (Search for 'schools' and 'moving lights' and you'll doubtless find them, as school halls are pretty much in the same category)

 

Noise, brightness, fine motor control, dimming curve (on LEDs), colour consistency across products (on LEDs), reliability, support (limited spares), worthless warranties, etc etc etc... ALL of these apply to cheaper movers because they are cheap for a reason. They MAY be fine in a small disco environment where much of the above but for anything remotely theatre based you need to consider all of them.

 

So, my own apologies for trying to change your mind, but that's really what you need to sit down and think about, and do so with ALL of the people who might use the hall lighting to see what THEY think, and what THEY would actually use, and not just what sounds like a good idea on paper. Paul's suggestion of buying some to try then returning isn't a bad one - OR just hire 3 or 4 units (if you can find someone renting out cheap movers, which will be tricky) - TRY what you're thinking of doing in a live situation and see hat we mean.

 

 

 

[top-cat]

Whilst I'm not sure from the OP that this IS a council grant, as opposed to a pot of money identified by the committee or otherwise running the village hall

So the phrase

the budget I've been given is a grant from the local council

leaves scope for other places the money might have come from?! http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif

 

 

 

Noise, brightness, fine motor control, dimming curve (on LEDs), colour consistency across products (on LEDs), reliability, support (limited spares), worthless warranties, etc etc etc... ALL of these apply to cheaper movers because they are cheap for a reason. They MAY be fine in a small disco environment where much of the above but for anything remotely theatre based you need to consider all of them.

 

I'm sorry but I don't agree. On a previous project I had a quantity of Chauvet Intimidator Spot 350s (IIRC we paid between £500-600) (these use a white LED chip and then normal moving head colour wheel, rather than coloured chip) and apart from the slightly poor colours in the colour wheel, I found them to be perfectly useable, and had one go down out of 24, which Chauvet replaced within a week. That was definitely not a 'small disco environment'. On a more recent project I had 40 cheap (£400 ish) OEM type 36x3W LED MH washes. These were also perfectly useable, have very nice saturated colours, the dimming curve could be better but this is my nitpicking and not something a small community hall would be complaining about. All which were not broken when they arrived, have managed over 100 shows without fault.

 

 

So, my own apologies for trying to change your mind, but that's really what you need to sit down and think about, and do so with ALL of the people who might use the hall lighting to see what THEY think, and what THEY would actually use, and not just what sounds like a good idea on paper. Paul's suggestion of buying some to try then returning isn't a bad one - OR just hire 3 or 4 units (if you can find someone renting out cheap movers, which will be tricky) - TRY what you're thinking of doing in a live situation and see hat we mean.

 

I'm not looking to have my mind changed - my mind is made up that you can get a perfectly useable moving head for £400; and that the secret is just knowing which ones are good and which ones aren't - which is precisely what forums like this are for. I just wish people could just say "I haven't seen any good moving heads for under £400", rather than simply saying that they don't exist.

[Ynot]

So the phrase

the budget I've been given is a grant from the local council

leaves scope for other places the money might have come from?! http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif

OK - missed that as I was looking more at the OP at that stage. hands up.

 

I'm sorry but I don't agree. On a previous project I had a quantity of Chauvet Intimidator Spot 350s (IIRC we paid between £500-600)

But what were you using these FOR? If that use was doing what the OP has indicated and lighting performers, then OK, maybe, although I remain sceptical because all LED movers I've seen in the sub £1000 bracket won't cope with that task with any measure of success. The fact that you're using 24 of them suggests that you're maybe doing effects lighting rather than actual theatre style body-lighting - of course that's just my impression, I could be wrong (again)...

 

But it must be said that so far you're the only one who's replied with a positive answer, but even then you're almost doubling the budget available. The online cheapest listing I've found for that one is £669 without including any of the extras that often knock up the end price.

 

But my arguments (and those of others here) aren't JUST about quality and price - it's about suitability of movers in the environment that has been described. Speaking as one who's lit shows in many village halls and small to medium venues, over the last thirty years, I can honestly say that at NO time have I ever thought "What this place really needs is some moving heads installed". And I'd disagree that a village hall wouldn't have problems with things like fan noise, steppy dimmer curves, and other shortcomings of cheap stuff. Of COURSE they would! Possibly even more than a larger venue, simply because of the space being that much smaller and every nuance of those 'features' would be exaggerated...

 

I'm not looking to have my mind changed - my mind is made up that you can get a perfectly useable moving head for £400; and that the secret is just knowing which ones are good and which ones aren't - which is precisely what forums like this are for. I just wish people could just say "I haven't seen any good moving heads for under £400", rather than simply saying that they don't exist.

It's not YOUR mind I'm looking to change but the OP's.

 

But you haven't actually specified a quality moving head for under £400 as yet have you. You've inferred that you've used some OEM LED washes but not been specific.

 

Oh - and unless I missed something else, I don't believe the OP specified LED by the way...

[paulears]

I can easily (as I mentioned!) recommend a cheap moving head spot. Stairville MH-X50 from Thomann. Bright, reliable (if a bit noisy) and excellent value for money. The problem is simply as I said, too narrow unless further away to be useful for lighting people. They look great sweeping through the air, doing fans and waves - but as a device to aim at somebody, for performance light - they just don't work.

 

I personally have changed my view on purchasing movers for light use venues. All the stuff I've been sticking in for two or three years is still going strong, and no weaknesses have popped up and bitten me. So now, I can see movers in schools being economic and OK. The only reason I'm saying no here is because what the OP wants will be impossible on the budget, and although the idea of being able to throw light into places on a need by need basis is perfectly sensible, narrow beam spots are NOT suitable.

 

I agree with Topcat - you can get quite useful devices for the money now - indeed, last week I saw a device with two small heads on a T bar, a one-piece, two head unit - and they were small, bright and did all the waving stuff very well.

 

My own point of view is simply that it's the use the OP needs to cover that prevents them being much use. It's like asking a long throw profile to do the job you'd use a wide one for, it just doesn't work.

[top-cat]

I'm sorry but I don't agree. On a previous project I had a quantity of Chauvet Intimidator Spot 350s (IIRC we paid between £500-600)

But what were you using these FOR? If that use was doing what the OP has indicated and lighting performers, then OK, maybe, although I remain sceptical because all LED movers I've seen in the sub £1000 bracket won't cope with that task with any measure of success. The fact that you're using 24 of them suggests that you're maybe doing effects lighting rather than actual theatre style body-lighting - of course that's just my impression, I could be wrong (again)...

 

But it must be said that so far you're the only one who's replied with a positive answer, but even then you're almost doubling the budget available. The online cheapest listing I've found for that one is £669 without including any of the extras that often knock up the end price.

 

I used them for both lighting performers and for effects lighting. Admitted- theres no zoom or at least an iris so unless the beam angle it comes with happens to the fit the criteria, it's over 'fore it started really. The colours are also a bit harsh. But my point on those was really that, to suggest they are only suitable for small disco-dave-and-a-van jobs, would be thoroughly incorrect. They'd be fine - in quantity - for large nightclub installs or lower budget rock venues, things like that.

 

We paid about £600 each for them, so yes the OP'd have to accept 2.

 

But my arguments (and those of others here) aren't JUST about quality and price - it's about suitability of movers in the environment that has been described. Speaking as one who's lit shows in many village halls and small to medium venues, over the last thirty years, I can honestly say that at NO time have I ever thought "What this place really needs is some moving heads installed". And I'd disagree that a village hall wouldn't have problems with things like fan noise, steppy dimmer curves, and other shortcomings of cheap stuff. Of COURSE they would! Possibly even more than a larger venue, simply because of the space being that much smaller and every nuance of those 'features' would be exaggerated...

 

Completely agree man, don't think I wasn't. My point was not that moving heads were a good idea, my point was just that the question was not being answered. Sometimes it's good just to answer a question, rather than try to tell somebody what question they should be asking.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think if the OP had come and said "I represent a village hall of capacity A. We currently do performances like B, C, and D. Our current kit stock is E, F and G; but sometimes I have problems lighting situations H, I and J. I have been given a £1200 budget to upgrade the hall's lighting, what would you recommend?" Then there would have been much more scope for much more helpful advice and my theory in my first post that the lights would most likely end up in a cupboard all broken within 12 months would not be ringing so true.

 

I'm not looking to have my mind changed - my mind is made up that you can get a perfectly useable moving head for £400; and that the secret is just knowing which ones are good and which ones aren't - which is precisely what forums like this are for. I just wish people could just say "I haven't seen any good moving heads for under £400", rather than simply saying that they don't exist.

It's not YOUR mind I'm looking to change but the OP's.

 

But you haven't actually specified a quality moving head for under £400 as yet have you. You've inferred that you've used some OEM LED washes but not been specific.

 

Oh - and unless I missed something else, I don't believe the OP specified LED by the way...

 

These OEM things were £400 ish and were fine. Brand was like... super light or something, you know, google it nothing comes up, utterly irrelevant brand name that will be called something else next month.

 

I appreciate LED wasn't specified, but since an MSD250 (example used due to being common in lower budget moving heads) comes in at about £60-70, I assumed that replacing 3 lamps at £200 a time when the original budget was only £1200 would not be high on the agenda and that choosing a light source which will most likely outlive the fixture would be the preferred choice. Fair?

 

Point being I think we're both getting at the same thing here... cheapo moving lights not the right product for the job. In fact moving lights in general probably not the right tool for the job. I think if the OP could swallow some pride and re-angle his question in line with my above suggestion, more useful advice might be imparted.