Design Small Church Lighting Help

[Fxguy]

Hello Everyone!

Over the past couple of weeks I have found myself as the unofficial lighting designer for our church. I have a background in theater lighting and am familiar with 3 point lighting design and the calculations involved in elipsoidal lighting. I would like to know some good resources for learning as much as I can about starting a lighting rig from scratch. Any books that you guys could recommend?

We currently have 8 Optima Par 64 LEDs and a Behringer Eurolight lc2412 board to control them via DMX. This does NOT light our 36 foot wide by 24 foot deep stage very well at all. Last weekend we rented 4 ETC 26 Degree Source Fours to finally light the stage where we could see it.

This was much better than our current adult worship setup of 16 75-watt flood lights with on and off control only!

So this is kind of where we're at, and as always, it must be done as cheap as possible.
My thoughts at the moment were to begin purchasing some ETC Source Fours one at a time and renting the remaining until we have completely furnished a decent rig. For the most part we'll be using the lighting during our Family Worship once a quarter.

Hopefully here is a photo of the space we're working with:


Thanks everyone!

 

[mstaylor]

If you are lighting everything from the booms right in front of the stage area then anything you do will be tough. Is it possible to move your S4's back to the next arch and use the LEDs for color wash. You would have to run the numbers to decide what degree lens you need.

 

[Fxguy]

If you are lighting everything from the booms right in front of the stage area then anything you do will be tough. Is it possible to move your S4's back to the next arch and use the LEDs for color wash. You would have to run the numbers to decide what degree lens you need.

We're in luck there. This past weekend we did hang our S4's from the second boom / beam back from the stage (the one that is visible barely on the edge of the photo.) From there we were ale to get the S4's almost ideal. The problems were found with the setup is that 3 fixtures is not quite enough to evenly light the whole stage across and the chandeliers cast great shadows!

But again, its starting from scratch and a work in progress.

Tim

 

[Kelite]

That looks like a nice space, Tim. Worship service with high ceilings and wooden beams take me back to a few churches I've visited during youth trips. As you've mentioned, adding other S4s as time and budget allows will take care of your needs.

Thanks for posting the photo of the sanctuary-

 

[kitsune]

LED fixtures can be pretty dim especially when compared to natural sunlight, and can get washed out pretty badly even from architectural lighting (not to mention unless they're RGBW units, their version of "White" can make skin look really weird. If you have any conventional dimming capabilities, Source4s like those 26degs will definitely give the punch you need to light the space, but it can get complicated to do anything fancy without oodles of power available.
From those close booms, which appear to be behind the kneebraces near stage, you might be able to get something out of Source4 PAR WFL, but again you'd have to look at conventional power to handle it.

 

[Fxguy]

Yeah, power issues are a bit of a problem. We have 20 amp circuits that we run them on and are running them on portable dimmer packs. Forgive me for not having the exact numbers in my head (its been a long week!) but we did calculate out that we could have three 500 watt fixtures on each dimmer pack and be under 80% max for safety. We could probably push 3 750-watt fixtures and be ok. So currently we could handle about 6 Source four fixtures currently before we have to start looking at changes in our power.

Since our starting budget is going to be approximately $500 to $1000 we are very limited at the moment. It will probably just cover the cost of 4 source fours. We'll have to run them with our current Eurolight board and borrowed / donated 4 channel dimmer packs, but its a start.

I'd like to replace the paneling on each side of the stone center to give us something to light with LED washes to create some mood lighting.

The other thing is that the congregation is VERY used to full on flood lighting. In other words they are reluctant to turn off the house chandeliers and side flourescents during services. However this week I heard some audible gasps when lights began to slowly transition and focus their attention!

Tim