‘Tis the season of trade show lighting. And whether you are starting to design the lighting for your client’s booth or you are already on site, you must make sure to put some thought into bringing a box of lighting accessories; you know, those little things good designers can’t live without. One of the first things I do when I’m drawing up a lighting plot for an exhibition booth is to pull out some photometric data sheets. These tell an LD how much candlepower and beam spread they can get from a typical lighting fixture. They can be downloaded from the Web sites of virtually every manufacturer of lighting instruments. My personal fave comes from ETC’s site. This is where I choose the first and most important accessory for a conventional lighting fixture — the lens.
Say I have to light a six-foot-by-12-foot banner from a distance of 30 feet. I will look on this sheet to find the lens that will give me enough beam spread to cover this item, weather I’m using a PAR, Fresnel or Leko. The smaller the degree lens, the brighter the beam. Most lighting shows use dimmers to control the amount of light from a fixture. So I always opt for the brightest, tightest lens to cover a product fully. But I always bring plenty of spare lenses, because I don’t always get it right on paper.
The Home Depot Line
Other times dimmers are not an option. Sometimes a wall outlet is your best AC source for a fixture. Then you must choose the proper wattage lamp. The light fixture can be dimmed by using a lower wattage lamp if necessary. Often electricians will use a two-fer to put a couple fixtures on one circuit and save on dimmers or cable. The problem is that one of these fixtures may have to light one object from 10 feet while the other fixture must shine on something 30 feet away. If one light is too bright but the other is just right, I use some neutral density (ND) gel to adjust it. It comes in increments to cut down the light output without changing its color.
Sometimes a handy accessory to have is a portable wall dimmer, the rheostat dimmers that can be bought at any Home Depot and are normally installed in a wall. But you can place them in any electrical box and you now have a manual dimmer.
Pick a PAR
PARs come with a variety of lenses. It’s a good idea to carry spare lens kits to every show because you will undoubtedly want to change some. I also carry a couple of barn doors to attach to a PAR or Fresnel. These are four-leafed devices that hinge on each side and can physically block sections of a light beam. Clients inevitably show up with a plant or floral ornament that simply must be lit. You light it with a PAR while it sits in front of a soiled hotel curtain. That barn door will allow you to shape the beam and prevent unnecessary spilling light on unwanted areas.
I rarely spec a PARnel on any show, but they would work splendidly for that application as well. I always bring a couple. The PARnel has a Fresnel lens on a PAR body and a reflector that slides back and forth to adjust the size of the beam from a tight spot to a wide flood. It emits a soft, smooth beam.
Lots of Lekos
I love all the accessories that come with the modern day Leko. Lekos are primarily a hard edge fixture with shutters that can be used to cut the beam into the perfect rectangular size you want. And they need plenty of accessories. The Leko cuts are helpful, but sometimes you just want to tighten up the diameter of a light beam. For this you should carry along an iris kit. This is a removable iris that can drop in the slot in the Leko to cut the size of the beam.
One of the biggest problems with Lekos is lens flare. A client can be walking down an aisle and a stray ray of light coming from the lens will distract him from the otherwise well lit product. For this they make something called a donut. This is a piece of metal with a circular cut out for the beam. It fits in the gel holder and cuts the flare from the side. Sometimes they may cut the beam too small, so you can drop an egg crate in the gel slot instead. An egg crate looks like it sounds — a series of square boxes that protrude about an inch. They block the flare from 45 degrees without cutting down the lumen output.
Shields Up
Because Lekos run the light beam through a series of lenses and concentrate the light, they tend to melt the gel very rapidly. Heat shield gels and heat resistant gels are good accessories to help save on gel life, but they are expensive. Most Lekos can be fitted with a gel extender, which is a simple piece of conical metal that holds the gel several inches away from the lens of the fixture. Many people want to see something lit well, but don’t want to see the source of the light at all. To help with this they make something called a top hat, which is a cylinder several inches long that attaches to the gel holder. The beam still pours out, but you aren’t distracted by the source of the light.
Lekos are great because you can put different patterns in them to break the beam into certain shapes of light. These gobo patterns come in thousands of designs or you can custom design anything you want to project. Client logos make great projections. Gobo patterns slide in the center gate of the fixture, but they need gobo holders, so always make sure and remember to bring some.
Winsome Wireless
My favorite accessory is any portable device that can trigger a console or dimmer wirelessly. If you are 30 feet up in a lift focusing light fixtures, it is a drag to have to yell down to somebody across the convention floor to bring up the level of the next fixture so you can focus it. Most dimmer manufacturers sell a wireless DMX remote Wi-Fi box that can turn a dimmer on from anywhere in a room.
The same goes for a remote focus unit. If you are using moving lights while you’re trying to light a variety of products in a big booth then you could use one of these. Most moving light desks have a remote or PC-based virtual console (or tablet), which allows the programmer to adjust focus positions or write cues while standing hundreds of feet from the console. Every once in a while I still see some poor programmer pushing a console on a road case around a carpeted booth, dragging hundreds of feet of tangled wire behind him. Oh wait…sometimes that’s me when I forgot to accessorize my lighting!
No self-respecting clothes horse would think of leaving the house without accessorizing, and no self-respecting lighting professional would think of showing up at a gig without accessorizing the lights. Don’t be stuck out in public with naked lights.
