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 at Landru Design, Nashville, TN
My “rely-ons” haven’t changed much at all. I still use a lot of Source Four ellipsoidals, Source Four PARs, PAR 64s, and fresnels. I know that LEDs are the whole craze right now, but I simply haven’t found any that offered what I believed 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. There are a few feature differences but there are so many knock-offs out there that those are few and far between. 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—and, if you’re not touring or throwing your fixtures down stairs, that gets pretty hard to see.
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. While their competition’s dependability and light quality can safely be argued, experience has shown that their output is really hard to beat.
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.
Amy Justice, Lighting Director and Production Technician at Liberty University
My go-to brand for fixtures is Martin. They have a wide variety of quality fixtures and with their recent introduction of the Rush line, their fixtures are becoming a more affordable option for churches. The Martin fixtures I have used have proven more durable and reliable than even some of their more expensive competitors. Another affordable option I would recommend is Elation's fixtures.
In choosing lighting equipment, my first criterion is flexibility. I want to purchase gear that allows for a variety of looks and works in multiple settings. The two types of fixtures I use most are small moving-head LED's and beam fixtures. Because LED technology is continually improving, LED fixtures keep offering better features for less money. Some of my favorite LED’s are the Mac Aura, Mac 101, and GLP Impression because they are small, light, fast, and bright. They can create a beautiful stage wash and have rich, vibrant colors. I also love a good bright spot fixture because they produce beautiful beam looks. Used well, beam fixtures can bring life to a design and keep it from becoming stale.
While I use a lot of LEDs and DMX-controlled fixtures, I still use many conventional fixtures. While the most obvious use for a conventional fixture may be for front or back light, they also can be very effective when used on stage. I often put ETC Source Four Pars and Thomas Moles on stage because they add warmth and depth to the stage.
In regards to consoles, I use MA Lighting’s GrandMA and love the flexibility and power of their desks. Jands Vista also has great products and their smaller consoles are more affordable than the GrandMA.
Kyle Russelburg, Director of Lighting / Stage Design, Gateway Church, Dallas, TX
At Gateway we don’t use a lot of different gear. 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 was on Varilite consoles before that, and was content to stay there until the launch for the GrandMA series 1. I was blown away with how fast and easy it was to get around on. Being a programmer 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 on them. For me it was just an easy choice, go with something you know works, and can train others on.
Ted Smith, Lighting Designer, Family Worship Center, Lakeland, FL
For conventionals, I prefer ETC Source Four fixtures. It is great to have a variety of fixtures that all take the same lamp, as it standardizes the spare lamp inventory. 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, 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 Qwash 419z. A nice mid-size mover, it has a good zoom range, colors are true, and has quick pan and tilt response. I think they are a great addition to the inventory.
Austin Fox-Welter, Lighting Coordinator, Northview Church, Carmel, IN
What are their products of choice these days?
For control, we recently upgraded from our Vista T2 (which has been in the room since it was built) 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, as well as any professional lighting designer.
As far as moving lights go, we have 14 Varilite 2500 profile fixtures. The 2500s are nice fixtures for what they are, good color mixing, sharp edge gobos, and fast intensity/iris/strobe. However, for our space we need something that packs a little more punch. For the future, we have been looking at the Mac Vipers.
For wash fixtures, we have 12 of the Chauvet LED 412s. These are great fixtures for a very reasonable price. Fast, light, and in my opinion, are a better choice over the Mac 101s. 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 own a plethora of America DJ, Elation and Chauvet LED PARs for those times where you want to get as much light coming off of the stage as possible, or great for lighting up set pieces and truss.
We also have eight Chauvet LED Bars. Referring back to eye candy, this is great for that. I really like the look they give, and there are many ways to hang and utilize them.
For all front lighting, and general theatrical uses, we use the standard ETC Source Four PARs and Ellipsoidals.
Our student building is currently utilizing six small American DJ LED PARs, a bunch of old PAR cans, and four Coemar wash movers for their service.
Dan Larson, Lighting Designer, Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL
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, but probably overpriced.
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 ol’ 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 light-weight. 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.
The Clay Paky Sharpy profile is also a really nice fixture. It’s fast and bright, and more flexible than I thought they’d be. Using the frost as well as prism, you can explore some other creative spaces with this fixture. And the Sharpy Wash is a great wash fixture, with a color wheel as well as CMY color mixing. We rent these, but may purchase some.
Our mainstay moving fixtures are the Varilite 3000 spot and 3500 wash. They are great fixtures, are bright, have good color and good color mixing.
We’ve rented the Martin Viper line, and these are nice lights. They are really bright, have great color and optics. They are also pretty fast, and have a fast fit lamp which is accessed from the back of the fixture so you don’t have to take the whole thing apart to replace the lamp. These are at the higher end of price point, though.
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 ten years. Every now and then, one might fail, but it’s rare.
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 good.
Dan Larson
Lighting Designer, Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL
For consoles, I’m a big believer in the Grand MA line, either series 1 or 2. We are still running the series 1 for our main auditorium, and are running on PCs in other rooms. 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, WI
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 Tough PAR 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 up-lighting of the curtain. There’s no fan, so they are quiet and also put out a good amount of light.
For control, we use ETC SmartFade boards as we are not doing much complicated. However, they are not very flexible, and we’d like to upgrade to a more sophisticated control system.
For special events, we sometimes rent in some Martin Mac 101 LED moving lights, and a Radiance UltraTech Hazer.
Helena Kuukka, Lighting Designer, Florida
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. The ETC Zooms are also pretty good, but they can take a little bit longer to focus.
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.
Then there is, of course, the whole new world of LED fixtures. 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 cells, 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 other words, they snap on/off, instead a smooth fade in and out. Depending on your application, this may not be an issue, or it may be a huge problem. The LED lighting industry is constantly changing and developing, so if you are planning to buy gear, do your research carefully.
In the world of automated fixtures, I will use any gear that does the job and that is best for the show, regardless of the manufacturer. I tend to gravitate towards Martin Professional a lot 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 fairly new Viper line is also excellent. It’s super fast and bright. Both the 301 and the 101 LED fixtures are also great little workhorses for many applications, both very bright and very fast. The Martin Atomic Strobe is, in my opinion, one of the most reliable strobes out there.
I also like the Clay Paky 700 Alpha Profile a lot for a moving head.
In terms of lighting consoles: for me it much depends on who is behind it, especially when it is a moving light show. The Grand MA 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.
Lighting Tools
Besides the obvious fixtures, dimmers and controllers, there are other handy tools that can assist with lighting functions. Here’s a few that our lighting designers mentioned.
Andrew Dunning:
A tool I believe would benefit churches greatly is Vectorworks (CAD software). It is available for MAC and Windows and can be incredibly valuable for creating lighting plots, figuring out department-to-department real-estate, figuring out room/seating layouts, and visualizing scenic concepts. I’d be lost without it.
Amy Justice:
If you have a number of DMX fixtures, I recommend purchasing a DMX splitter. Splitters make managing cable runs much easier because they combine multiple runs into one universe, which makes for a cleaner stage.
Austin Fox-Welter:
About a year ago, we moved from our two Look Solutions Unique hazers to an MDG Atmosphere. It uses both CO2 and an oil-based mixture. I can’t express the difference it made in our room, not to mention how efficient the fluid and C02 usage is. Overkill? Not at all! Lighting is all about creating an environment, and haze is a huge factor in doing that.
Dan Larson:
The various Focus Tools by stagejunk.com are really handy to have, and way better than a collection of wrenches. Many of our lighting guys have them. And there’s a couple apps as well. The PocketLD by Michael Zinman has great info in there. You can select a fixture and lamp, put in throw distance, and it’ll tell you how bright it’ll be. And DMXDipster is a dipswitch calculator for setting manual addresses on fixtures and dimmer pack that use DIP switches.
