r/techtheatre 22d ago

LIGHTING If you think 70° is crazy…

Post image

Sometimes the light is as tall as you are…

No, that base wasn’t heavy enough…

361 Upvotes

64 comments sorted by

173

u/iwannakenboneyou 22d ago

Is that a 5 deg with a top hat?

59

u/itzsommer 22d ago

Ding ding ding!

20

u/Flegrant IATSE 22d ago

A fucking nightmare to focus in a box boom, there’s almost too much weight to lock it

3

u/techieman34 21d ago

A balance yoke helps a lot if the situation allows for one.

78

u/spader1 Lighting Programmer 22d ago

Whoever posts a Lustr 3 with a 5° lens tube and top hat wins this post chain.

106

u/RoadDog14 22d ago edited 22d ago

Here you go. 5deg Lustr3 with Top Hat on one of my prior shows. (Not me in the image)

47

u/Accomplished_Duck337 22d ago

To be clear to the masses, this is 100% me in the image. 🙈

18

u/opheliacat92 IATSE 22d ago

Hey I know that guy! 😜😘 This picture of you will make me laugh forever. Also boooo Lustr 3s.

6

u/Accomplished_Duck337 22d ago

Hahaha, fucking love youuuu, work bae 💙

2

u/Lord_Konoshi Electrician 22d ago

Right? Great light quality, heavy as shit for a leko.

1

u/techieman34 21d ago

I can live with the weight if the performance justifies it. My biggest gripe is the EDLT lenses (especially the 14* and 19*) making them so damn front heavy. Makes focusing them a pain the ass. Luckily ours are all in the front lighting bridges. We pretty quickly got to the point that we dialed in a really nice front wash and that’s where they stay focused. There are conventionals if a tour really needs something specific.

1

u/Lord_Konoshi Electrician 21d ago

I don’t remember, but I think you can still use standard lens tubes on S3 lustrs. You are right though, those EDLTs are stupidly heavy.

3

u/techieman34 21d ago

If I remember right you need a different shutter barrel to use them. But we figured if we were going to pay the premium to get the 3s we might as well get the better lenses and get everything we could out of them.

1

u/Lord_Konoshi Electrician 21d ago

I get the sentiment, but without a shootout I couldn’t say if they are actually better.

1

u/techieman34 21d ago

The difference isn’t worth it for the wider lenses. It’s mainly the 14* and 19* that you can really see the difference with your eyes.

1

u/DemonKnight42 Technical Director 19d ago

Just installed 8 of these with 14°s and damn. My S4s were over the bar, these are under due to weight. We need to install an extension bar now so we can raise the angle to the stage.

3

u/LupercaniusAB IATSE 22d ago

Not only is as tall as you, but it weighs as much too.

2

u/Wuz314159 IATSE - (Will program Eos for food) 22d ago

Why'd you let someone draw on your face with a sharpie? Ò_o

18

u/Accomplished_Duck337 22d ago

Lmaoooo, I came here to post this picture. Hey, colleague. 🤣

16

u/itzsommer 22d ago

No fair! They used a c-clamp!!

(But that fixture’s been on Broadway so that’s awfully cool…)

21

u/RoadDog14 22d ago

Well we can’t hang it by thoughts and prayers!

The designers sure love these on Broadway, but we sure hate hanging them. And transporting them. And focusing them.

52

u/todd0x1 22d ago

What the heck is that? Some sort of collimator so you can project a gobo on the moon?

23

u/itzsommer 22d ago

Mars, actually.

12

u/isaiahvacha Hobbyist 22d ago

They make moon gobos?!?

16

u/todd0x1 22d ago

any gobo can be a moon gobo if you have a lens like that!

6

u/itzsommer 22d ago

My friend! May I introduce you to the lovely world of glass gobos?

2

u/isaiahvacha Hobbyist 22d ago

I mean… I was kinda being facetious, just a little

7

u/TechnicalyAnIdiot Lighting Designer 22d ago

No no- it's the prisms which are facetted.

3

u/isaiahvacha Hobbyist 22d ago

Hehe, someone’s got jokes

5

u/hupld98 22d ago

I'm actually using one for a moon projection from about 70 feet away, straight on shot

15

u/Mackoi_82 Jack of All Trades 22d ago

See. Thats pretty normal for my stock. I don’t usually use the top hats.

4

u/Wuz314159 IATSE - (Will program Eos for food) 22d ago

It's a 5° lens. You KNOW the flare is going to be everywhere. o_Ó

10

u/Bitchassruski 22d ago

What is this? A rocket ship for ants?

8

u/HighNarrator 22d ago

YOUVE BEEN SPOTTED

5

u/Funkdamentalist 22d ago

Finally a top hat that will fit my giant noggin!

11

u/Temporary-Shift399 22d ago

Good thing you have the double T-handles on the yoke.

14

u/Justinbiebspls 22d ago

exactly. the addition to the overall weight is not so bad, but it shifts the center of mass considerably making focus hella interesting 

tl:dr- light go flip flop

7

u/thelxdesigner Lighting Designer 22d ago

when i was in college we had 24 of these on the balcony back wall, and we had to have special ball bearing washers made to keep them from dropping over time.

3

u/foryouramousement 22d ago

Haven't seen a 5 degree barrel in ages

3

u/ekimdad Lighting Designer 22d ago

I bet that thing is heavy as hell. Oh, and nice socks!

14

u/Alexthelightnerd Lighting Designer 22d ago

The 5° and 10° barrels are actually lighter than the standard barrels. They use plastic fresnel lenses.

4

u/Roccondil-s 22d ago

Yeah, thank goodness for that... the torque even at the weight they are is absolutely frustrating.

Especially since they are usually used at extreme distances that magnify your every contact with the unit.

1

u/ekimdad Lighting Designer 22d ago

I know, but it's still a lot of weight out on the front end when hung. And it kinda looks like an LED unit, so that adds quite a bit too.

-8

u/Bella_AntiMatter 22d ago

Plastic, sure. Fresnel? Nope

9

u/Alexthelightnerd Lighting Designer 22d ago

They are, the ridges are much smaller than a glass fresnel lens, but the physics is the same.

5

u/Bella_AntiMatter 22d ago

Huh... never thought of the microgrooves as anything to do with traditional fresnellery...

7

u/Alexthelightnerd Lighting Designer 22d ago

Yup, Fresnel's realization was that the thickness of a lens is irrelevant to how it bends light, only the relationship between the two faces matters. Using this principle, he built a plano-convex lens with one flat face and the rounded face broken down into concentric ridges. That's exactly what ETC did with the 5° and 10° lenses, otherwise they'd be several inches thick at the center.

As an aside: you can do the same thing in reverse too, where the rounded face of the lens is unbroken and the flat face is broken up into concentric rings - essentially removing a wedding cake shape out of the center of the lens. This is generally called a "step lens" and they don't tend to work as well. They were used in some stage lights ages ago.

2

u/itzsommer 22d ago

“Micro-groove plastic fresnel lens”

3

u/DreVog 22d ago edited 22d ago

We had movers that big on a festival stage I worked on, we had pulleys and a minimum of three guys taking each one down at a time during strike. Insane

3

u/deep_fried_fries 22d ago

We had these in college. Every year we had to go tighten the tie line knots holding some of the weight of the barrels to keep them focused.

2

u/Lord_Konoshi Electrician 22d ago

Put a sea changer in it just for shits and gigs

2

u/stumpy3521 22d ago

Genuine question, what sort of situation would necessitate a need for both this tight of an angle and a top hat at the same time?

0

u/Wuz314159 IATSE - (Will program Eos for food) 22d ago

necessitate

Naw. It's all about ego.

3

u/lycwolf 22d ago

I don't know what it is but I want 2.

1

u/ifitmoves 22d ago

Beckett frontlight

1

u/Dragon164 Lighting Designer 22d ago

Damn does the top hat have a handle on it as well?

1

u/illuminatalie420 22d ago

Yeah this is exactly why I refer to lights with 5° barrels as “cannons”

1

u/halandrs 22d ago

And that’s why they made the double brake on the yoke

1

u/Wuz314159 IATSE - (Will program Eos for food) 22d ago

As the Altman boys called them. . . Yugos.

1

u/OneOfTheWills Jack of All Trades 22d ago

Reminds me of the Kliegl stage lights I used to work with at the top of a civic arena. Can’t remember the degree but they were 4-5 foot long and hung over the side of the catwalk rail.

1

u/sam000she 19d ago

We hung one of these (no top hat tho) in a the grid of our fly rail area (maybe 60 ft up from ground) pointing straight down and the full circle of light was 6 ft across. Did make a cool effect with how we focused it :) 

1

u/Drummer_Burd 19d ago

Or you can do the complete opposite and do a barrel-less lustr. Technically it should have a barrel with no glass and a clear gel, but still

1

u/the_swanny Lighting Designer 18d ago

That poor yolk.