Of 2 spaces in our facility, the Black Box uses S4 Jrs's (60 total) while the
road house uses a lot of the full size 25/50's and 15/30's (84 of 200 ellipsoidals total).
I'm a big fan of zooms, having steadily increased my
ellipsoidal inventory with them for 25 years now, transitioning from
Colortran 6"/15-30's to
Altman Shakespeare 15-30's and
Altman 4.5" 25/50's and now to
ETC. The Source 4 6"
zoom is by far the best
zoom I've used. It's very fast to focus and stay's focused. I just installed 16 of the 15-30 series and have zero issues with them being front heavy. Note that I cannot recall if the range on some of these is actually 15-35, or 30. Doesn't matter.
That said, we use them because we have a "rep
plot" at the
road house that we don't change and need the flexibility zooms offer. The 6" units are all in a
house where they are hung on winched electrics (or box booms), so weight and size is not an issue, even though they are about 50% heavier then a standard S4 36 degree. We do not have time to swap lenses and it's cheaper to buy a 25/50 ($472 at Pro Advantage) then a 36 deg. with supplemental 26 and 50 degree lenses (Total of $508). Plus we save union labor costs not changing
lens tubes around.
I probably would not use the 6"
zoom in a
house where I was hanging every week or where it was other then a
pipe grid. Our Dept. of Theater black box is all Uni-Strut/Versa-Bar and the lighter weight of a junior
zoom is an advantage. The size is an advantage as well on a low ceiling.
But as others have stated,, you give up
shutter and
image rotation with the Junior, though the DoT compensates with an inventory of fixed
lens Shakespeares to do their
gobo washes, so in this application, the Junior makes sense as it provides the bulk of the area lighting.
Your
call if the 575 is bright enough.