LED instruments can contain a number of different coloured LEDs, often red, green and blue, and different light output colours can be achieved by adjusting the intensity of each LED color group. LED instruments should have a long service life relative to other options, without the expense of colour gel or replacement lamps.
LED instruments are increasingly used for live music events, most notably festivals where they are more visible than conventional lighting under daylight. LED instruments were prominently used for the Live Earth festival as they are regarded as more environmentally friendly as fixture for fixture they use far less power than other lighting.
Another advantage of LED instruments is that they can be controlled directly using DMX and do not require additional dimmers
Profile lanterns produce clearly defined spots of light (hard-edged or soft-edged) and are the most focussable and versatile of the lanterns. They have a lens (some have two lenses), a lamp and a reflector, and they also have shutters and a gate.
Profiles get their name from their ability to project the shape of anything placed in the gate of the lantern between the lamp and the lens. These shapes may be formed by the shutters, or they may be cut out of thin metal (a “gobo” – see below). The shutters are a more flexible (and accurate) version of the barndoors which can be used on Fresnels or PCs. You can’t use barndoors on a profile as the shutters do a better job, and the way the optics of the profile work, the barndoors would not work anyway.
Some profiles with only one lens have two sets of shutters, one of which gives a hard edge to the beam, and one which gives a softer edge. These are known as bifocal profiles.
Profiles with two lenses (zoom profiles) are best for projecting gobos and other shapes, as the size and sharpness of the beam is fully adjustable throughout the beam angle range of the lantern.
A zoom profile lantern is known by the range of its beam angle (e.g. Prelude 16/30, Cantata 18/32 are both zoom profiles from Strand Lighting’s range).
The beam size can be reduced even further by the use of an iris diaphragm. This is inserted into the gate of the profile (where the gobo holder would go, so both can’t be used together) and features an adjustable aperture which can cut the beam down to almost nothing.
A wireless microphone, or cordless microphone, is a microphone without a physical cable connecting it directly to the sound recording or amplifying equipment with which it is associated. Also known as a radio microphone, it has a small, battery-powered radio transmitter in the microphone body, which transmits the audio signal from the microphone by radio waves to a nearby receiver unit, which recovers the audio. The other audio equipment is connected to the receiver unit by cable. In one type the transmitter is contained within the handheld microphone body. In another type the transmitter is contained within a separate unit called a “bodypack”, usually clipped to the user’s belt or concealed under their clothes. The bodypack is connected by wire to a “lavalier microphone” or “lav” (a small microphone clipped to the user’s lapel), a headset or earset microphone, or another wired microphone. Most bodypack designs also support a wired instrument connection (e.g., to a guitar). Wireless microphones are widely used in the entertainment industry, television broadcasting, and public speaking to allow public speakers, interviewers, performers, and entertainers to move about freely while using a microphone without requiring a cable attached to the microphone.
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