I was wondering --
what's the comparison with
ETC S4 and
Selecon?
I've never try
Selecon before. Beside the durability, shape of S4.
Well, I have no idea how to put it into words.
It would be nice is someone can give me some technical brief on this one.
I've been really impressed with
Selecon. They have a very intelligent design behind them an you over and over say, "wow that's a great idea that I haven't seen on another
fixture. The heat all vents out the top so they run cooler than any other
instrument. Compared to a S4, the field is flatter and more even. I have the feeling the difference between
beam angle and
field angle is almost zero. If you
drop a
gobo in a
selecon, it's as crisp as a S4 with a
donut. So the optics are very good... probably superior but hard to tell without a shoot out. The
barrel rotates 360, and a lot of other handy features. The lamp mounts in the up position and then a mirror shoots the visible light forward while allowing I.R. to pass out the top through a
heat sink, this makes them banana shaped and a little more difficult to pack in tight together. It also means there is a definite side that needs to be up. Plus it doesn't use an
HPL lamp so there's definite disadvantage. I looked very hard at
Selecon for my new theater but decided that the advantages just don't out way the fact that they are more expensive here and there are very few of them here. I know that my
ETC inventory will keep me very happy for many years and if things break, it won't be hard to get parts. Plus
ETC's customer service is tops. If I lived in Oz where they are cheaper than S4's I would gladly
purchase a whole rig of
Selecon. But here it doesn't make a lot of sense. I am going to
purchase 8
Selecon zooms for the specific purpose of
pattern projection, but beyond that I'm all
ETC.
Maybe some of the Aussies can elaborate more on the Selecons, I've just demoed them a few times.
Back to the original question, the
Strand SL isn't a BAD alternative to the S4 (The Shakespeare is). The SL has a few cool features not in the S4. And I can see why in
some cases you might choose it over the S4, but it's not enough to get me to buy them.
As for the S4
PAR, nothing out there is close. It's a great lighting
instrument and has been pointed out it's cheaper in the long run than even an old cheap
PAR 64 and a collection of lamps. First remember that anything else out there is a knock off of the S4
PAR. I've never used a Starpar but everyone I've talked to hates them and says they are vastly inferior. The optipar I don't know much about either... I do know that some of the knock offs out there don't use the
borosilicate glass so they come with a cage to prevent heat shattered lenses from falling out and killing people... NOW THAT'S a GREAT feature.
Haven't used the
Parnel in more than a demo. A lot of people don't seem to like them as they aren't really a
PAR or a
Fresnel. But I've also heard people who say get over that and try them, they are really convenient and put out a lot of nice even light. It seems to be an interesting alternative to something like the
Selecon PC. Both are concepts not embraced in the U.S. but I can definitely see their value. It's just hard getting designers to move past PARs, Fresnels, and
ERS instruments and try something new.
A friend of mine said, "Make my whole inventory
Source Four... I'd buy
Source Four shoes if they made them."