Moving Lighting

Intelligent Lights: High End Systems & Varilite

Wash vs. Profile: Wash instruments are easily described as a moving fresnel with color mixing capabilities, although some come with pebble convex lenses. The profile style is more like a moving ellipsoidal zoom with all of the motion effects attached and automated. Typically a profile instrument includes an iris, zooming (within the parameters of the lens), an adjustable focus, diffusion, multiple static/moving gobos, and static/color mixing wheels.

Mirror Head Movement vs. Full Yoke: Mirror-head movement requires a small angle adjustment of a mirror to move the beam of light across a large distance, thus the mirror-head has a faster beam movement but the draw back is a limited range of motion on the pan and tilt. Mirror-head instruments are typically profile units. The Full Yoke instrument has a head that can pan at least 360 degrees and tilt more than 290 degrees, giving the instrument almost a complete field of movement. However, the entire head of the instrument has to rotate for the beam to move, so the movement is slower.

Tungsten vs. Gas Arc Lamp: The most noticeable distinction between a tungsten and an arc lamp is the color temperature. Tungsten has a color temperature of 3200 degrees, which is the same as conventional theatrical lights. A gas arc lamp has a color temperature of 5500 degrees, which is similar to Xenon and HMI instruments. Arc lamps do not fade; instead a mechanical dowser, flag or louver drops over the front of the lamp. The higher color temperature and nature of an arc lamp emits more lumens (amount of light) per watt than tungsten fixtures. Gas arc lamps are much more expensive and require time to match the color of conventional lights when used in conjunction.

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