Lights and Sound: purchasing a lighting starter kit

purchasing a lighting starter kit

Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Producing Theater
Forum Name: Lights and Sound
Forum Discription: Technical discussion
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4323
Printed Date: 5/03/24 at 5:01am
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Topic: purchasing a lighting starter kit

Posted By: alwill
Subject: purchasing a lighting starter kit
Date Posted: 11/13/09 at 5:41pm

We are considering purchasing a few lights for our theatre. Has anyone had any experience with LED fixtures?

A little background: We are housed in 1930's high school auditorium. The stage has 14 foot ceilings, is approx 38 feet wide at the procenium, 30 feet at the upstage cyc, and 25 feet deep. We presently rent all of our lighting for our annual show, but would like to have a very basic system for rehearsals and other events (band concerts, etc) that the school district might have. Not trying to do away with rentals, but would like to be able to integrate the two.

I'm asking about LEDs because I know they are more energy efficient and I wouln't need a large dimmer rack to use them. But, do they work as well on stage?

Thanks for any advice and/or comments.

PS We should all forward the link to this site to every community theatre group we know! I've been looking for a site like this for YEARS. There are simply loads of info and ideas to be shared.

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Al
Lake City Community Theatre

Replies:

Posted By: Gaafa
Date Posted: 11/13/09 at 7:54pm

If what you hire at present does the job, duplicate it with your own gear. Very few ameatre groups here have gone in for the Led lamps, so can't help you much there. I can see how with the lower voltage used in america, you use about double the amperage that we normaly play with for the same results. Therefore we only require a 10 amp circuit to carry 2.4KW load. {conventionaly 3 phase is regarded as 440V - 254v single phase [415v +/- 6%] in this State (WA)}.

The Led lanterns will reduce the number of lamps required for a multi colour wash, so a big saving on the kit needed there.

For general 'X' ray wash I use Border battens to give the 3/4 colour wash, which use incandescent bubbles, they are primarily floods. I believe Osram are now floogging ES encapsulated halogen bubble, so we will be changing over to them, as the incanescents are becoming hard to procure these days.

A good source of gaining lighting is getting on to venues that are updating thier gear & offering them at least the tradein value. A lot of suppliers are tending to

dump old tradeins, as landfill, rather than offering them to commeatre groups these days. You might be able to grab a bit of gear by saving them a vist to the local tip?

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Joe
Western Gondawandaland
turn right @ Perth.
Hear the light & see the sound.
Toi Toi Toi Chookas {{"chook [chicken] it is"}
May you always play
to a full house}