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Author Topic: how many lights?  (Read 3046 times)

Corey Ellis

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how many lights?
« on: May 09, 2004, 11:31:22 PM »

Hello all.  How do you guys determine how many lights you use (say 575w par 64's) you use to light a stage.  Let say you want to get a wash of a 32'x32' stage.  How do you decide how many downstage pars to use?  Is there a formula?

Corey
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Craig Leerman

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Re: how many lights?
« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2004, 01:25:45 AM »

Quote:

 How do you guys determine how many lights you use (say 575w par 64's) you use to light a stage. Let say you want to get a wash of a 32'x32' stage. How do you decide how many downstage pars to use? Is there a formula?



There are indeed a number of formulas available to help a lighting designer figure out beam spread, lumens, throw, etc...  There are way to many here for me to list in a post.  My advice to you is do a simple search on Google. In 1 min of searching, I turned up many pages of usefull info on lighting formulas and math.

Here is one page to get you started.  

http://www.mts.net/~william5/sld/sld-600.htm

If you have a specific question on one aspect or formula, please feel free to post it and I'm sure the community will jump in to help you with specifics.

Craig
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I'm so old, when I was doing FOH for Tommy Dorsey, to balance out the horn section I would slide their chairs downstage and upstage to mix!


Corey Ellis

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Re: how many lights?
« Reply #2 on: May 10, 2004, 01:52:54 AM »

Thanks Craig.  I'm more of a sound guy and I had no idea what parameters to use for a search.  I'll have more questions soon.

Corey
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Michael Strickland

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Re: how many lights?
« Reply #3 on: May 10, 2004, 07:34:07 AM »

As many as you can afford. With a 32' x 32' stage, I imagine your capacity is 1000-1500? The touring LD's want to see as many lights as possible. If I'm right on capacity, I'd go with no fewer than 24 upstage and 12 downstage. That would be on the low side of acceptable.
I assume you're looking at the Source 4 (575w)?. Good fixture. Sure each one is more expensive than a regular PAR, but you'll save on AC and dimmers. PLUS variable dispersion.
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"Can you turn the monitors down please, IT HURTS!" - M.I.A.

Corey Ellis

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Re: how many lights?
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2004, 12:31:11 PM »

Thanks PDX.  I understand how you save on AC w/ the Source 4...but how do you save on dimming?
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Michael Strickland

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Re: how many lights?
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2004, 01:46:37 PM »

The 1200 W per channel dimmers are less expensive than the 2400 w per channel ones. You'd need the 2400 w if you went with 1000 w PAR's, 2 per channel.
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"Can you turn the monitors down please, IT HURTS!" - M.I.A.
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