'Dip'Oaldabs, I hope this helps.
It did!
And are we the same entity now? And can't you come up with a better name?
The following contains some inferences based on experience and observation, but the historical facts are absolutely correct. Note I am speaking of professional designers working with union crew members and rental fixtures.
Before 1992, designers would focus a
wash of ERSs by setting a sharp
edge, making
shutter cuts, and then running the
barrel either slightly out or in to soften the
edge. In theory, after the first light was focused, the designer and electrician knew the
barrel setting for all the other lights. In practice however, the
bench focus of the light played a major factor and sometimes one light would look better with
barrel in, even though all of its brothers had
barrel out. On order to speed the focus process, some clever designers took to focusing all units sharp, and then adding the lightest
frost available at the time, R114.
When the SourceFour became the standard, the practice continued and escalated, as designers saw that the S4 beam was almost too perfect. It was difficult to obtain a soft
edge that would blend with its neighbors. So the practice of adding Hamburg became even more commonplace. But never being satisfied, designers wanted a less soft
edge than R114 afforded, but didn't want/couldn't to go back to running the
barrel. Thus begat R119. After a few years, again designers decided they wanted something slightly less soft, and R132 was born. Choosing from three densities of Hamburg is still more efficient than having an IA guy run the
barrel on every light, while 27 other stagehands look on.
Agreed.
It offends my sensibilities to think of putting
frost in a
template unit, so forgive me if I ignore that. I must ask if same designer also insisted on donuts?
Donuts and frost in the template slot? Huh...
"
Frost" is a generic term which may be used to refer to any diffusion, not just R100. I've used the term "Hamburg" above when referring to all three R114, R119, R132. There are rough equivalents in
Lee and
Apollo.
GAM is unique in that they offer 9 different degrees of diffusion, from 10-10 to 10-90. I'm still searching for the perfect diffusion for my followspots. See
http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/lighting/5772-ever-put-baggy-followspot.html?highlight=baggy.
I did read that. I actually was perusing your website when I was looking at the Source Four with lampshade.
I think I'll need to search (and if it doesn't exist, create a thread) about diffusions, as I wandered into that section of my swatchbooks the other day, and wondered what the primary uses of each of them were (as they keep getting more bizarre-- compare R132 to AP1400, L414, or L460...) Or we could just discuss it here?
For a garage experiment, sharp focus an S4, with
shutter cuts. Run the
barrel and observe the
edge. Put it back to sharp. Now try 114, 119, and 132. Post your findings! Obviously the desired
edge will vary depending on the
fixture's intended purpose, so this
exercise is an abstraction. And we have yet to touch on peak vs.
cosine distribution.
My garage needs expanding of it's inventory. Charc has LED PARs in his, and you apparently have a large quantity of S4s lying about. It also doesn't help that I get more "garage experiment" ideas the longer I stay on CB...
So I suppose I'll have to wait until sometime I can wander into the school's lx room to try that (or if cdub's reading this, want to help?).
I'd love to touch on peak vs cosine. I thought the consensus here was keep it as cosine as possible...