Types of Lighting Fixture
Within the groups of "wash" and "spot" light, there are other, more specific types of fixtures.
- Profile
These fixtures feature a compound lens which allows the designer to place obstructions within the image path which are then projected. These obstructions could be "gobos" or shutters. A profile is a spot light, but allows for precise focusing.
- Fresnel
A Fresnel is a type of wash light and is named as such due to the Fresnel lens it features as the final optical device within the chain.
Traditionally theatre and stage lighting has been of the "generic" type. These are lights which are focussed, geled, and then simply dimmed to give the effect the designer wants. In recent years the emergence of moving lights (or automated lights) has had a substantial impact of theatre and stage lighting.
A typical moving light allows the designer to control the position, color, shape, and strobing of the light beam created. This can be used for exciting effects for the entertainment or dancefloor use. Moving lights are also often used instead of having a large number of "generic" lights. This is because one moving light can do the work of several generics.
In the UK the nomenclature is slightly different from North America. This article primarily uses the North American terminology. Although there is some adoption of the former naming conventions it has been normal to categorise lanterns by their lens type, so that what in the US is known as a spotlight is known as a Profile or a Fresnel/PC (Pebble/Plano/Prism Convex) in the UK. A Spotlight in the UK often refers to a Followspot. The following definitions are from a North American point of view. UK naming conventions are used in most of the world, in fact most North American theatres will also use the UK terms except when talking in a more general sense (i.e. get a spotlight to focus on that set piece, or 'flood this area').
In Australia and many other places, the lamps inside a theatrical fixture are referred to as bubbles. In North American English, a bubble refers to the protrusion that occurs when one's body (or other oily substance) contacts the lamp. Heat will cause the portion of the lamp which has oil on it to expand when it is on creating the bubble, and causing the lamp to explode. That is why one should never directly touch the glass portion of a lamp. Cleaning with rubbing alcohol will remove the oil.
Read more about this topic: Stage Lighting
Famous quotes containing the words types of, types, lighting and/or fixture:
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)
“He’s one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.”
—Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)
“Popular art is normally decried as vulgar by the cultivated people of its time; then it loses favor with its original audience as a new generation grows up; then it begins to merge into the softer lighting of “quaint,” and cultivated people become interested in it, and finally it begins to take on the archaic dignity of the primitive.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)