Stage Lighting Instruments

Stage Lighting Instruments are often used to light up the set during concerts, theatrical productions and many other performances that are done in an area where live performances are allowed. They can also be used to illuminate sound stages and television studios. There are many terms that are different between the United Kingdom and the United States. Within the U.S. these type of fixtures are called units or instruments, while in the United Kingdom that are referred to as being luminaires or lanterns. The most common term is often used by the United States.

Units will have all of these components.

They will have a housing. It is this lamp housing that will serve for the whole body of this unit. It can be made from plastic or metal containers and will prevent the light from going into unwanted areas or directions. It is considered to be the whole exterior part except for the lens. This housing is able to be created with specific types of elements in place that are able to reduce the heat that comes from the lamps or even help to increase efficiency. Previous models had often been created from machined or rolled aluminum or even sometimes steel. When Source Four had appeared most of the equipment had been made from die cast metals. This allowed it to be lightweight, and single bodied that was considered to be economical in use. The original die casting that was used on these luminaires were the Strand Pattern 23 which happened to be designed during the 1950s by Fred Bentham. This small type of mirror spot was produced for around 30 years and had found its way into a lot of theaters, halls and school in the United Kingdom. There are some such as the Selecon Pacific that are made from plastic.

They will also have an opening or lens. It is this opening within the samad which the gap will be inside of the housing where the light beams will come from. There are a lot of lamps that will use lenses to control beams, however, there are some like cyclorama or border units which will not have any optics or lenses besides the reflector. The reflector and lens as well as other types of beam altering devices will be considered to be pieces of the optic system.

It will have a reflector. It is this reflector that will deal with the quality and even directionality of the light output. Reflectors will be found behind or even around the light source and it is done in such a way that it is able to direct the beams towards the opening or the lens. Every type will have a type of reflector that is used with a lens or an opening in order to make the desired effects. Ellipsoidal reflectors will have lamps that are place into a particular focal point and the reflectors bounce light and causes it to focus on a different focal point which is located near the ellipse. This causes a tight light beam. These types of reflector will be utilized for areas that need to be focused on even though they may be used as a flood light. Parabolic reflectors will have the light set within a focal point using a reflector which bounces beams into parallel beams. There is not a part where the light will meet, so the light is not able to focus. These are often used for the lights that have to have unfocused washes like in PAR cans.

A reflector may even be utilized in order to eliminate or lower any thermal emissions. Often times when incandescent lighting will create beams that are created when a filament is heated. However, arc lighting will create beams that are created with the ionization and heating of certain gases. In each of these cases, it is possible for heat to be emitted from the unit as being infrared lighting. Thermal energy can then be shone on the stage which becomes a type of visible lighting that is often a lot of watts that will be beaming down on the actors who are on set, which makes it really uncomfortable for them. So, there are specifically created reflector types that will be used in order to help remove and even absorb all of the infrared heat from the unit before there will be visible illumination which will touch the area.

Then there is the yoke. Most of these lamps will be supported or suspended using a U-shaped type of yoke that happens to be fixed at 2 separate points which are on the sides of the lamp which provides a rotation axis. The base for this yoke will normally be just a single bolt that will let the yoke be rotated which provides another rotation axis. When they are put together, these two axis’ will let the light be fixed to a point at any place within a spherical motion range that encircles the yoke. This will often be connected to pipes or battens with clamps. It can even be put on the deck using a type of floor mount or it may be attached to the set using stage screws. There are some yokes that can be motorized which allow a remote-control system to change the lamps where it need to be pointing during a certain point in a show.

There are also accessories that will come with the luminaires. They are often conventional yet non-intelligent types that were designed to accept many different types of accessories that are used to assist with output by being able to modify it. The very common type which is often found in many different types of stage lights will be the gel frame holder. This particular accessory is used to hold gel which is the mounted into a metal or cardboard gel frames. There are other very common accessories which include color scrollers, barn doors, donuts, iris holders, and rotators or gobo holders.