Follow Spot Rental Spec.

jmac

Active Member
Renting a follow spot for a musical in a small theater. It is about 50' from spot location to front of stage, maybe about 60' to the typical actor being spotted.

Previous rental specs. just said "cabaret style" follow spot. What does that mean? We always seemed to get one that worked, probably because the rental company knew the application. But we will be sending out to others who may not.

So, what requirements should be listed to make sure we get a proper unit, besides throw distance? Anything, type, footcandles (how many typically?), diameter of circle, etc? Color boomerang always included, or should that be mentioned too? We've had some noisy ones; what's the best way to prevent that? Thanks.
 
We have 3 of the 1209's, and really like them. We shoot from an average of 85', and they are still very powerful. Rarely are we ever running them at full intensity. The light quality does have a bit of a blue tinge to it. The field is very even over all though. They are quiet.

~Dave
 
The 1209 might actually be too bright. Don't have my specs in front of me, but off the top of my head, a 1209 (575w HMI) yields about 190fc at 100 feet as compared to 20fc for a 1000Q Quartz Altman. That's almost 10 times as bright. Depends how bright the stage is. When I think "cabaret style", 50 feet, I usually think 1000Q.

1209 is a great spot.
 
When I think "cabaret style", 50 feet, I usually think 1000Q.

Same here. Most houses will have something along the lines of a 1000Q. I think that 1209 might be overkill for that, as much as I love 'em.
 
The 1209 might actually be too bright. Don't have my specs in front of me, but off the top of my head, a 1209 (575w HMI) yields about 190fc at 100 feet as compared to 20fc for a 1000Q Quartz Altman. That's almost 10 times as bright. Depends how bright the stage is. When I think "cabaret style", 50 feet, I usually think 1000Q.

1209 is a great spot.

So what does "cabaret style" actually mean??
 
Don't know what cabaret style might mean other than assuming a throw distance similarity to what's typical to a small to medium throw.

Go to the fixture manufacturer website, often they will have a photometrics chart that given your true A2+B2=C2 throw distance. This true length should tell you the beam size in optimizing what follow spot type, than luminous output desired to be using.
 

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