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Colortran Fresnels and Power Ratings


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Hey I'm a student interested in building up a light kit and I'm looking into picking up some older 1kw and possibly 2kw Colortran Fresnels. Can anyone tell me more about these lights. From what I've gathered they were mostly used for stage lighting in the 70s and 80s.

 

Also how do these older units compare to a newer 1kw/2kw arri fresnel/mole richardson light.

 

In addition, If I understand correctly, the power rating of a light is not indicative of its intensity as different systems (i.e florescent) outputs more lumens per watt than tungsten. Does this hold true when comparing fresnels to other fresnels?

 

Thanks and I appreciate any input.

 

Mayer Chalom

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This is an oddly specific question that I actually have an oddly specific answer to. I dabble in theatre lighting technician work as well as in the film world, so I use my lighting kit for both. I own 4 Colortran fresnels lamped up with BTR 1000w lamps. When I bought them, they were lamped with BTN 750w lamps, but for their size, anything smaller than a 1Kw lamp makes them inefficient to lug around. They're somewhere in between the size and weight of a 2K and a 1K, but they need a strong steel baby stand to support them. I bought 4 Matthews Maxi baby stands and they work great. The full-flooded output is pretty decent (I'll take a meter reading eventually) but they spot very poorly and the beam starts to get distorted. My favourite thing about them is how easy they are to assemble and disassemble and there is really nothing that can kill these lights. They're built like tanks and the wiring is so basic that it can all be easily replaced. My one complaint is that most theatre lights come with stagepins and stubby chords which means the lights are always hot-stabbed. This isn't a major problem considering the price of them, but I've yet to find a high-quality cable with an inline 1Kw-rated switch. I would definitely recommend these lights for a starter light kit (heck, I use them on mid-budget shoots just because they're reliable).

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