Tungsten lighting (and fluorescent)

[adam2]

I have seen a surprisingly good result in a village hall from a dozen halogen floods as used on building sites, 4 metal halide floods* and a selection of cheapo LED PARS.

 

The halogen floods take very cheap and long lasting lamps and give a good white light. The LED PARS are fine when colours are needed for bands and musicals, and were very cheap. The only real lack is a follow spot.

 

*Donated by myself and intended for shop display lighting, not theatre. Not dimmable. Used with the halogen site floods they give a very bright and even "neutral white" light that is ideal for filming or photography but less suited for a stage production. Used for curtain calls when fond parents want to photograph the little darlings after school plays. The lamps are under £10 each and last for years.

 

 

 

[Junior8]

This last point is very important when the purse strings of small amateur groups are controlled by non technical folks - they do a google search, and come across a "7x10W RGBW slim par" for 40 quid and wonder why you're pitching at around a grand for your preferred solution, or why you can't light your show with a rig of 100 quid eye candy movers instead of the Clay Paky/Robe/Martin/ETC etc device you really need.

 

I've come across a group where they had a good, well maintained (but of course, ageing) small rig of P23s, P123s and P60s plus a disparate collection of LED par cans that a member had "picked up from eBay as and when" because they were "a good price".

 

Just out of curiosity I went back to the oldest Strand price list I have - July 1970 and looked at what a few items would cost at today's prices. First price is list, second adjusted for RPI, third adjusted for earnings rises over the period. Interesting I think.

 

Model 1970 2020 (RPI) 2020 (Earnings)

Patt 23 £13.90 £211.28 £347.50

Patt 263 £30.00 £456.00 £750.00

Patt 123 £12.60 £191.52 £315.00

Patt 243 £32.20 £489.44 £805.00

Patt 137 £4.40 £66.88 £110.00

 

 

Edited January 8, 2020 by Junior8

[sunray]

This last point is very important when the purse strings of small amateur groups are controlled by non technical folks - they do a google search, and come across a "7x10W RGBW slim par" for 40 quid and wonder why you're pitching at around a grand for your preferred solution, or why you can't light your show with a rig of 100 quid eye candy movers instead of the Clay Paky/Robe/Martin/ETC etc device you really need.

 

I've come across a group where they had a good, well maintained (but of course, ageing) small rig of P23s, P123s and P60s plus a disparate collection of LED par cans that a member had "picked up from eBay as and when" because they were "a good price".

Not checking up on me are you?

 

I have seen a surprisingly good result in a village hall from a dozen halogen floods as used on building sites, 4 metal halide floods* and a selection of cheapo LED PARS.

 

The halogen floods take very cheap and long lasting lamps and give a good white light. The LED PARS are fine when colours are needed for bands and musicals, and were very cheap. The only real lack is a follow spot.

 

*Donated by myself and intended for shop display lighting, not theatre. Not dimmable. Used with the halogen site floods they give a very bright and even "neutral white" light that is ideal for filming or photography but less suited for a stage production. Used for curtain calls when fond parents want to photograph the little darlings after school plays. The lamps are under £10 each and last for years.

 

 

 

I include linear floods in my kit too, mostly for up lighting the autitorium [as an alternative to some 3KW of fluo in one hall] but perfectly OK for flooding a stage. We did a company prizegiving hosted by Steven K., the hotel wouldn't allow 'stage lights' due to weight and lack of adequate power so we did the whole event with 12x500W hanging on the ceiling grid to light the stage and about another 12x150W uplighting, all on one ring final.

Additionally one group has one of these:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEhIv9bHuKIand I have access to more if needed

 

[willjam39]

But I find the floods don't replace a Fresnel when you need accurate and focus-able lighting in a theatrical setting. A decent LED Fresnel or Profile is needed aimed at amateurs budgets, even if just a white or amber which can be gel'd up

[timsabre]

But I find the floods don't replace a Fresnel when you need accurate and focus-able lighting in a theatrical setting. A decent LED Fresnel or Profile is needed aimed at amateurs budgets, even if just a white or amber which can be gel'd up

 

I agree about the floods, but there are some affordable LED fresnels or fresnel-like fixtures now - for example the Elumen8 MP60 for about £200 which is similar output to a 650W.

[alistermorton]

I wonder how well th eMP60 takes gel? I white LED fixtures have improved a lot recently.

 

We have some of the 4 colour MP75 fixtures, and we reckon subjectively they're somewhere between a 300W and 400W fixture in most colours except "brilliant white" where they're close to a 500W. Six of them were outshone in brightness and nearly in coverage by a single colorsource fresnel fixture.

[timsabre]

I wonder how well th eMP60 takes gel? I white LED fixtures have improved a lot recently.

 

We have some of the 4 colour MP75 fixtures, and we reckon subjectively they're somewhere between a 300W and 400W fixture in most colours except "brilliant white" where they're close to a 500W. Six of them were outshone in brightness and nearly in coverage by a single colorsource fresnel fixture.

 

Yes, the thing with the MP75 is it's only about 18W per colour and "white" is not 100% of everything, so I would expect the MP60 to be quite a bit brighter (in open white). I haven't seen one in the flesh though, it was just a suggestion of price range.

Gels on LED fixtures, even warm white ones, is always a bit of a game due to the missing bits in the "white" spectrum but you just have to go through gel colours till you find something that works. You don't get the nice warmer colour at dim levels either. But all these things can be worked around.

Edited January 9, 2020 by timsabre

[sunray]

But I find the floods don't replace a Fresnel when you need accurate and focus-able lighting in a theatrical setting. A decent LED Fresnel or Profile is needed aimed at amateurs budgets, even if just a white or amber which can be gel'd up

Oh no they most certainly don't replace Fresnels but how often does an AmDram show really need the accuracy of proper fittings?

 

 

One of my local halls has a row of 8 PAR 38's above the curtain track and the players were very surprised when I turned up with 4 patt 23's and 4 fresnels. They were even more surprised when I put up 4 more fresnels just for the 'Morcamb & Wise breakfast sketch'.

 

[OllieT]

Should venues be saving up funds for a big financial hit in five or ten years from now?

 

I think long term Tungsten is toast, so I have told the school that I am involved with to start saving because in a few years they are going to need to take a big hit.

There are big savings by going LED, not just the energy. LED removes the need for PAT testing huge quantities of socapex, removes the need for lots of dimmers and their maintenance ect, massively reduces the amount of heavy power you need to run in for an event, removes lamp costs, in some cases removes gel costs, much safer as it doesn't get as hot ect ect.

 

 

Yes it is expensive, but buying a tungsten S4 is not much cheaper than a colour source LED S4, and that cost will quickly disappear with the savings you will get out of led. You also only need one colour source to do the job of 2 or 3 Tungsten S4, so the flexibility you gain is huge

[sandall]

But I find the floods don't replace a Fresnel when you need accurate and focus-able lighting in a theatrical setting.

They don't, but screwing Italian 4-leaf barn-doors onto my collection of (RS, Wickes, etc.) 500W floods has made them quite controllable for general washes & non-theatrical events like comedy or music, inside or outside, wet or dry. Easy to gel with a couple of croc-clips, & having 4 doors makes them much more versatile than the usual cheap "stage" floods.

[paulears]

Perhaps best suited for a separate topic, but I've noticed that the lighting designs we now see simply don't work with older lighting kit. Looking at the rig here for panto, it's very different from what would have been here just ten years ago. Movers then wiggled a lot, while now they tend to be fixed in each scene, providing one light source that doesn't have to be duplicated for different colour or beam sizes etc. We might have had 20 profile FOH, and now we have a smaller number of movers doing the same illumination tasks. Over the stage, the bars of Fresnels doing area lighting aren't there any longer, because LEDs really do do a better job.

 

The amateur groups with a collection of elderly old Strand kit, with the expensive running costs can't do the things modern kit can. I'm a long term Strand appreciation society, but the old kit just cannot match the usefulness of modern kit. Spending a fortune on lamps for pretty basic lighting at some point becomes a poor solution. Especially now that the cost of the imported no-name kit is so low. The usual comments about reliability, lifespan and complexity don't work when a few lamps = a cheap head that is so much more useful, and of course covers the job of perhaps two old profiles or Fresnels. 4 pattern 123s on a bar or a couple of cheap movers? Any colour, high brightness and the ability to point anywhere. Nostalgia apart, ordering 4 new lamps is now a substantial cost, better put towards something else. I still have a quantity of old kit, and last year didn't buy any old T series lamps at all. This year the 4 still hanging with blown lamps will come down and join the graveyard. The 8 remaining T-spots are still working, and will stay in use till their lamps fail. Very sad, but practical.

[alistermorton]

Oh no they most certainly don't replace Fresnels but how often does an AmDram show really need the accuracy of proper fittings?

 

All the time for many of us.

 

 

 

[Charlotte_R]

Oh no they most certainly don't replace Fresnels but how often does an AmDram show really need the accuracy of proper fittings?

 

All the time for many of us.

 

+1 for this. I'm a professional tech, but I still do a fair amount of design for amateurs because it's a good way to build my portfolio. I approach an amateur design in the same way as I approach a professional design, which I must admit has surprised a few directors because they're used to having someone to turn the lights on at the beginning and off at the end!

 

I'm also not sure that I agree with the idea that you can dump all of your socas either: most of the rigs that I work on professionally still have a breaker per fixture or for a couple of fixtures.

[richardash1981]

The other problem at the moment is that, given the short life of a lot of older LED kit, there is no real market in second hand LED fixtures of any use.

For a long time I suspect low-budget rigs got by on second hand fixtures, because Strand Patt series and so last more less forever. I certainly have done, with a few from skips / PAT fails on wiring etc that could be easily repaired. So quite possibly no-one at many groups ever paid the list price for their rig, but they remain usable (along with the halogen security flood, which was remarkably adaptable). As has been implied, trying to do the same with LED kit is likely to be disappointing due to matching / aging / tendency to die rapidly, and so the pipeline of OK-but-you-can-get-better second hand fixtures has rather dried up, and will probably stay that way until something so much better than a S4 LED shows up that professional houses start to move them on?

[sunray]

Oh no they most certainly don't replace Fresnels but how often does an AmDram show really need the accuracy of proper fittings?

 

All the time for many of us.

 

 

 

Well yes there are AmDram groups and then there are AmDram groups. One of my local halls has 8 PAR 38's as I mentioned and the players are totally happy with it, another local village hall has a 100A 3ph to a Strand 24ch pack with 2 winched FOH bars, the crews then bring in the rest of the kit and start with the stage extension, truss, and lighting crew who used to [probably still do] regularly work at TVC, LWT etc. who install a heavily overspeced rig for such a small venue. I have to also say there is a corresponding difference in the quality of the players.

Sometimes it's very hard to see the line between Am and Pro shows.