Moving Lights
Moving Lights
Moving Lights are not stationary. That may seem ridiculously simple but that is the essence of their functionality. They are not stuck doing one thing. They can do many things and then change and do those things differently. If you consider many of the properties of light, Intensity, color, location, sharpness, texture, movement and so on, the moving light can do all of those things and change each one of those properties.
General types of "Movers"
- Scanner - This is a unit that the lamp, color wheels, iris, gobo wheels stay stationary but has a mirror that moves to move the location of the beam of light.
- Moving Head - This is a unit that the "head" of the unit includes the light source and all of the other inner workings and it is the head that moves to change the location of the beam of light.
- Moving Wash - This is a unit that primarily focuses on color changing and fundamentally nothing else.
- Moving Spot - This is a unit that changes color but can also change other properties of light. Some of those properties may be manipulated by color wheels, gobo wheels, prisms, strobe capability, internal shutters and sometimes motorized focus.
Some other important things to note about "Movers"
- They do come in conventional lamp and LED versions.
- The conventional lamp units are generally always running at full power and use a shutter to adjust intensity.
- The LED varieties are also plugged into constant power but the control signal adjusts the intensity.
- Pay attention to the voltage of the unit. Many units are 220-240V but there are many 120V and Multi Volt units available.
- Moving lights have so many functions it takes many forms of data to control them. When they first came out each function took a channel. You certainly can still do it that way. Many modern controllers now have changed the thinking to include Channels and Addresses. Meaning that you can have a fixture be on a specific channel and then it's functions are addresses to that specific channel. So a unit in Channel 1 can have addresses like 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so forth. Each point controls a specific function of the mover.
- You have to really invest the time into learning a controller to get the full benefit out of your moving lights.
