PAR vs. LEKO ?

[Brian Wells]

I have worked with both PAR and LEKO style lights and haven't yet come to terms with why a PAR is generally preferred over the LEKO. In particular, why would you pick a Joker over a Dedo in the 400W category? Both lights offer a 4 to 50 degree spot to flood range. Yet, the PAR is more expensive and takes longer to setup (because of the lenses). What difference does it make to pick one over the other?

[Hal Smith]

I have worked with both PAR and LEKO style lights and haven't yet come to terms with why a PAR is generally preferred over the LEKO.

I use Source Four ellipsoidal's in preference to Source Four Pars and Parnels every chance I get, not only because I personally own thirty six 750 watt S4 ellipsoidals . I like using an ellipsoidal's shutters much more than barn doors for control, I can easily drop a gobo pattern into a S4 where wrestling with a cookie can be a real pain in the a**, etc. If I want a softer lensed light, I use true Fresnels, much more control and a better quality light than pars. About the only use I can see for the par design is something like outdoors at night with a need for a lot of light blasted on a building, etc. ETC has recently come out with optically improved lens barrels that are opimized for projecting gobos and photographic images. I haven't used one yet but I've seen still photos of them in action and they look great. Costly, but great. :D

[Chris Cooke]

The thing with Source 4 ellipsoidals is that the biggest light is a 750w. You can though put K5600 Joker Bugs in them to give them more output. I love ellipsoidals especially for set wall effects. Pars are just a lot more cost effective and usefull in more situations. You can stick any kind of lens in to give them different effects, they output more light (per watt) than fresnels or ellipsoidals, they're relatively cheap and they're less fragile. I like to use mfl pars behind diffusion frames and nsp pars for backlights when shooting live music shows and such.

The great thing with ellipsoidals though is that eliminating spill is very easy using the shutters and you can get very crisp edges from them or defocused soft edges.

Both pars and ellipsoidals are very useful but we're compairing apples to oranges.