If in FLK something really cheap such as Wiko, perhaps on the FLK, otherwise the pricing between a GLA and FLK should by now be less than a dollar in difference but a world in efficiency and lamp life.
Agreed on re-marking the old lamp boxes as with making them marked “used” than perhaps somewhere on the box - clean with
denatured alcohol before use.” The foam or otherwise packaging that comes with the new lamps I am sure Marius means.
The old lamps will be useful at times when say you don’t need full
intensity but want to fight amber
shift, or when in other situations you need more long life
throw away and don’t need as much light. Segregate of course and secure.
On “Personal Inventory” this be it fixtures or lamps - make sure that your personally secured inventory is still one that while is entrusted to you to secure and does not leave without your knowledge, is not viewed as belonging to you. Tricky situation in owing gear verses being personally responsible for it. Difficult also not to view what nobody wants to see again as your own personal gear if it ain’t - just stuff you are securing for future use after that concept is forgotton or such gear is needed again either in another way or inspite of.
Side note on derekleffew’s - I just donated all my old theater’s lamps and those I bought to my local theater. I currently own no Lekos, had no real use for the lamps and in the future when I own more can afford to buy new lamps. Good thought if you are just saving these lamps because they still work but don’t really plan on using them in the near future. Don’t matter to the local theater - lamp life left, any money saved is money that goes into surviving. Donating the used lamps is a really good idea.
Hmm, been
thru the don’t get along with concept - don’t function very well does it? I’m more for the new bridges constructed from anything from not getting along with
Altman when I first got to work and now these days they are dependable to my first college not getting along with the local high school until I asked and stared the new relationship. Sometimes it’s a person to person type of thing.
Given school policy and teacher politics but details can be worked out be it from repair costs, to paid staff on-site to supervise the equipment to what ever is needed as detail to the extent that the school in question don’t get sound gear but lighting stuff is a different department. Again while fragile the relationship between say a student and those in charged in relations with other entities, general concept is that all support each other. You need a prop say they have, burnt bridges don’t get you that - professionalism or if necessary compartmentalization does.
Need some color of
gel late on a rehearsal... who else in town might have it in
stock?
Beyond that a college supports the area. Back when I was in high school we never saw or even knew of our town’s college theater yet we frequently saw presentations or borrowed stuff from other schools be it junior high school, community theater or other high school in our area. Your college is part of that kind of community area that serves more than just the local high school in all being in a
broad sense or local to it. Heck, my company a few years after we moved still serves not just our once local high school but also its area high schools for an area we are no longer in.
I would say donate the lamps to a theater in your area that will find use for them - so they need to during pre-show perhaps change between lamps at times, still means a few less dollars per year they spend on lamps if using or able to cope with that sort of lamp.
On what you buy... I would say the GLA would be the most cost effective lamps. Even if just a dollar or two more, consider lamp life between a FLK and a GLA and you will average out to 5x the lamp life which is reflected in lamp price, much less lamp accuracy in the
reflector.