I'm an audio guy sliding over into lighting. I produce conferences in the HOW world for between 300 and 700 people. I have a bunch of 575w lekos and a bunch of Chauvet SlimPar Pro RGBA LED pars that seem to do well with the brightness of my 575w lekos (mostly Strand Centurys - a few old style S4s). My usual setup is the LED pars illuminating a scrim and the lekos both gelled ungelled for front wash light. I'm using mostly 36 degree fixtures and throw distances are generally 10' to the front of the stage, 30' to the back of the stage.
I'm causally interested in movers as I've found gobo projection to be pretty neat (yes, I've made it all the way up to '60's hi-tech lighting), and I would like to take advantage of all the other cool stuff - less focusing on ladders, reduced fixture count, etc.
Where should I be looking to get started? I was originally looking at Mac 250 Entours, but a friend suggested that they aren't up to the task, and suggested the VL440 at a minimum. I certainly like the price of the Entours better than around double that for the VL440s, but I understand the buy once, cry once principle, and could make use of the zoom feature of the VL, in addition to the extra brightness.
The HPL575 lamp I'm using in my lekos seems to be rated at 14,000 lumens - not sure if this is "out the lens" lumens, or bulb lumens. The VL440 is 9,000. Am I already in trouble? I would like to use these occasionally as key lights, but often as backdrop candy.
I don't need to worry too much about video, but I do need the fixtures to run on 120v.
Thanks for any thoughts.
I'm causally interested in movers as I've found gobo projection to be pretty neat (yes, I've made it all the way up to '60's hi-tech lighting), and I would like to take advantage of all the other cool stuff - less focusing on ladders, reduced fixture count, etc.
Where should I be looking to get started? I was originally looking at Mac 250 Entours, but a friend suggested that they aren't up to the task, and suggested the VL440 at a minimum. I certainly like the price of the Entours better than around double that for the VL440s, but I understand the buy once, cry once principle, and could make use of the zoom feature of the VL, in addition to the extra brightness.
The HPL575 lamp I'm using in my lekos seems to be rated at 14,000 lumens - not sure if this is "out the lens" lumens, or bulb lumens. The VL440 is 9,000. Am I already in trouble? I would like to use these occasionally as key lights, but often as backdrop candy.
I don't need to worry too much about video, but I do need the fixtures to run on 120v.
Thanks for any thoughts.