Lighting designers' choices are often the product of very careful consideration. It's like how some people are either Mac people or PC people. You probably see the brand preference thing play out on your own tech team over and over. But the truth is, technical equipment users—certainly professional lighting designers and those working at our churches, whether pro, near-pro or volunteers—find themselves, over time, being more effective using certain models that they have learned to know and love.
In a quest to relieve the church tech of potential years of trial and error finding the best lighting products, CPM went straight to lighting design pros out in the field working with churches and lighting techs currently working at churches. We wanted to know, what are lighting designers saying on the topic? What are their products of choice these days? Why is one product favored over another—and which particular pieces of gear are designers using most prominently in the church setting?
Andrew Dunning, Owner/Lighting Designer, Landru Design, Nashville, Tenn.
I still use a lot of Source Four ellipsoidals, Source Four PARs, PAR 64s, and Fresnels. I know that LEDs are the craze right now, but I simply haven’t found any that offered what I believe to be a good balance between quality of light, reasonable cost, and what I’d call ‘week-to-week friendliness.
For the traditional PAR fixtures, there’s not a lot of difference in light quality—that is more a function of the lamp. You pretty much have the choice between the Altman style and the Thomas/Tomcat style. I tend to prefer the latter. Once you’ve made that choice, the bigger differences have more to do with durability.
In Fresnels, there are actually pretty huge differences. I tend to be a fan of Arri. They are very dependable, have nice light quality, and have higher output than their competition.
In consoles, for events on which I am my own programmer, I prefer MA Lighting’s GrandMA 2, hands-down. For installs that have to be ‘newbie-friendly,’ Jands Vista is my choice.
Kyle Russelburg, Director of Lighting/Stage Design, Gateway Church, Dallas
At Gateway, we are an all-Martin Professional facility. They provide great products for all scale of venues.
We use everything from Rush series products all the way up to Mac IIIs and Vipers. For control we use all MA Lighting GrandMA Series 2 consoles. I started using GrandMA consoles about 13 years ago…. I have had to use a lot of desks, and to be honest they all have their pros and cons, but for me I enjoy working on the GrandMA product lines. The hardware they put out makes it easy to layout my show, and is incredibly strong and reliable. Here at Gateway Church we use a lot of volunteers, and I’ve found it very easy to be able to train users with little to no console experience.
Ted Smith, Lighting Designer, Family Worship Center, Lakeland, Fla.
For conventionals, I prefer ETC Source Four fixtures. It is great to have a variety of fixtures that all take the same lamp. However, when it comes to a good wash Fresnel, I like the Strand Fresnelite, in a 2K.
For moving fixtures, I started working with Martin units well over 10 years ago starting with the Mac 500 and 600 and then the Mac 2K. At Family Worship Center (FWC), we have had 14 Mac 2k’s in a permanent install since 2005. With regular maintenance, the fixtures are still performing today. I have on occasion rented for productions the Martin Mac 3 and the VariLite 3000. Both fixtures are great, good color, good optics, but my biggest negative is their size. Putting them on the floor or on a rig, they just take up so much space.
The consoles I have enjoyed using are the standard ETC Expression, a very simple board. I have used some of Strand Lighting’s consoles, which were good but a little difficult for moving lights. And at present, FWC has a Martin MaxXYZ, which I have come to love. A very user-friendly console with nice big touch screen displays that work well with my larger fingers.
FWC recently purchased some Chauvet Professional LED moving heads, the Q-wash 419z. A nice mid-sized mover, it has a good zoom range, colors are true, and has quick pan and tilt response.
Austin Fox-Welter, Lighting Coordinator, Northview Church, Carmel, Ind.
For control, we recently upgraded from our Vista T2 to a brand new Vista L5. Personally, I’ve been a Hog fan ever since I’ve been a lighting designer, but Vista has certainly grown on me since coming to Northview. It’s extremely user friendly, and can do what any other console can do, just in different ways. It is great for volunteers, [too].
For wash fixtures, we have 12 of the Chauvet LED 412s. These are great fixtures for a very reasonable price. I would highly recommend these for churches of all sizes, whether it’s just a few of them for a multi-site, or 30 of them to fill a rig in a large auditorium.
We use around 20 PixelRange PixelPar LED fixtures. Having any sort of static LED fixture is great for washing out the stage with color, or using it on the ground for eye candy. We also have eight Chauvet LED Bars.
For all front lighting, and general theatrical uses, we use the standard ETC Source Four PARs and Ellipsoidals.
Dan Larson, Lighting Designer, Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, Ill.
For static LED fixtures, the Chauvet Pro line has a few nice options. The Colorado 1 Quad Tour RGBW are really bright and have no video flicker at all. The Colorado 2 Zoom Tour, also an RGBW fixture, is also very bright and its DMX-controlled zoom capability is very nice.
We use the Elation Level Q7 LED PAR RGBW fixture, which has a great dimming curve on it. And the PixelRange PixelPar is also nice and bright….
We also purchased some Chauvet SlimPar Quad 3s, which were under $250. We bought those for work lights and running lights, and they have been great for that. We have also used the Chauvet SlimPar Quad 12 for work lights, and also for regular lights for smaller rooms. I’ve heard good things from the guys that are using them.
With LED stuff, you generally get what you pay for. If they cost less, it may not last as long, or the colors might not be as good.
For tungsten static fixtures, the good old ETC Source Four Ellipsoidals are the mainstay of our rig, as well as ETC Source Four PARs.
The L&E Mini-strips, which are six-feet long, are great for uplighting scenery or talent. And we like the Thomas PAR36 blinders, as well.
For moving lights, we like to rent the GLP Impression X4S LED moving head. I like them because they are really fast, bright, and relatively lightweight. They are great for washing scenery and backlight on talent.
The Martin Mac Aura LED fixture is really fast, bright, and is good eye candy for the camera. You can colorize the lens itself but have the light from the fixture be a different color
Our mainstay moving fixtures are the Vari-Lite 3000 spot and 3500 wash. They are great fixtures, are bright, have good color and good color mixing.
For moving front light, we still use the city theatrical autoyoke with a Source Four attached. All the advantages of Source Four optics, but very low maintenance. They just keep working. We’ve had 32 for 10 years.
For consoles, I’m a big believer in the Grand MA line, either series 1 or 2. Our other campuses are running Jands Vistas. We like it because it’s easier for new techs to step up to it.
Mark Wyse, Director of Technical Arts, Blackhawk Church, Middleton, Wis.
Everything we do here is really simple. We use all ETC dimmers with the Unison architectural control system. ETC Source Four Ellipsoidals provide our front lighting, and we use Blizzard ToughPar LED fixtures for color and texture in all our rooms. They were only $550 each, are really bright, and don’t flicker on video at all. It’s a relatively new company in Milwaukee.
We’ve also used some Chauvet Slim PARs. Our main venue has those for uplighting of the curtain. There’s no fan, so they are quiet and also put out a good amount of light.
Helena Kuukka, Lighting Designer, Orlando, Fla.
In the world of conventional lighting, ETC Source Four Ellipsoidals and PARs are pretty much the ‘bread and butter’ of the trade. They are durable, good quality, available, reliable—a good basic light for most things. The ability to change different size barrels is a great asset: if you discover that you need something tighter or wider, you just change the barrel and you are good to go (or the lens of the Source Four PAR). The optics are generally good, as long as they are maintained well.
For simple washes I still like a Fresnel lens fixture: it has a lovely even field and it’s easy to blend into a wash. Both Altman and Arri have several great Fresnel fixtures, depending on the throw distance and brightness that you need.
I use a lot of LED PARs and LED moving heads from various manufacturers such as Coemar, Elation and Martin Professional. With LEDs you really need to think about how you will use them. If you simply need a lot of saturated color, you can go with a simple LED fixture with a red-green-blue cell, but if you are planning to use them for face lighting and also need softer tones and true color mixing, you want to make sure you select one with also the “amber” or “white” cell in it, such as the Elation Impression or Lightronics 5-in-1 RGBW LED fixture. Also, look into the dimming curves: many of the less expensive LEDs still tend to ‘dump out’ at the bottom of the dimming curve….
In the world of automated fixtures, I tend to gravitate towards Martin Professional because I know their gear to be reliable and their service to be excellent. I have used the Martin Mac III line a lot, both the Profile and Performance fixtures, and the Viper line is also excellent. I also like the Clay Paky 700 Alpha Profile for a moving head.
In terms of lighting consoles: for me it pretty much depends on who is behind it, especially when it is a moving light show. The GrandMA line is fantastic, especially for complex shows with lots of effects. The ETC EOS and ION are solid consoles, especially if you have primarily a conventional rig.
