Lighting Design for a wedding

[Les]

Les, if you can find out who made and where you can get an ellipsoidal adapter for a PAR 38, I will be happy for long time! had WAY too much trouble trying to match a rack of PAR 38s to blend with texture from a Source 4. Do the inkies work well as a replacement for a PAR 38/make better light?

I will get right on it with the ellipsoidal adapter! Heck, maybe if I can't find them available commercially, I'll look in to an easy(ish) way to manufacture them out of old lighting instrument parts. Stick a shutter gate and lens tube in front of a par 38 and believe it or not, it makes for a controllable and focused beam!

The inkies are great because they're controllable. I'm not sure about how well they perform against par 38's as far as brightness is concerned (I only have the incandescent kind and they are a little dim), but the quarts 100w would probably give the par 38's a good shake.

 

[len]

I concur that LED are the way to go for wedding uplighting. No heat, easier to select colors, change colors during event, etc. But like every other tool, they're not for everything. Conventionals have their place as well. But if Shawn doesn't plan on getting into this on a regular basis, or doesn't have the money to purchase, he'll have to rent what's available and that may mean conventional pars.

 

[SHARYNF]

San Marcos if I recall is about 30 miles from Austin tx. I would find it hard to believe that there is no one who will rent Led Pars or Strips. Wiedamark is in Dallas

While there are horses for courses, my concern is the safety factor
It is not like a theater environment with top down lighting or up lighting in a protected area. There is the heat issue on the adjacent surface, if you move the lights out far enough to remove the heat issue, you tend to have the real chance of someone tripping over a hot light. In addition when up place conventional pars in a straight up position the natural convection cooling tends not to work as well , and people will tend to be much closer to the lamp than in a theatrical situation. Also many hotels use some sort of vinyl wall covering, and if you get the par too close, and you put several of them together you run the risk of melting the vinyl. And then of course the is the issue of running extension cord which are carrying a reasonable load around the venue. OF course it is not just a case of getting the Pars they all need proper floor mount stands

If it were top lighting on trees or truss, it would be a totally different matter, but on the floor close to the walls to have the proper visual raises some real issues for 24 300 watt hot pars

Anyway I'd be very worried Weddings tend to operate where the "audience" is distracted and prone to do things that if they thought about it they probably would never do

Sharyn