I've been doing a lot of reading about stage lighting, everything from the "create a mood" articles to articles about the actual equipment needed to achieve various effects. However, I can't seem to find much information about moving head fixtures and scanner fixtures. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Do they provide the same general effect?

Typically, scanners are faster moving than heads. Moving heads have a greater range of motion than scanners. If you want color mixing, you will almost always need to be using a moving head.

Those are the major differences.

Kevin

Generally, when it comes to slower moving cues, I find the movement of scanners to be too choppy looking....whereas the moving heads usually have a more fluid looking movement to them.

And as Kevin said, your usable range of movement is much bigger with moving heads.

As far as aesthetics, moving heads are also what people are used to seeing in concerts, TV shows, etc. Scanners look cheaper to audiences than moving heads, even though it may not actually be the case. If this is a consideration.....

What is the effect you desire? What kind of budget do you have? How many DMX channels do you have?

Fitz

Actually, I'm not doing anything with them yet. In my reading, I found some references to them, but not a lot of details. I was wondering whether they are intended to provide the same general effect, and the differences and advantages of one over the other.

Same general effect, just different mechanics to achieve it. And as we've said, pros and cons involved with both styles of mechanics.

Cost difference due to engineering also factors into the differences between the two types of fixture.

In a moving head fixture, you're moving the entire fixture and all of its attached weight, which includes pretty much every item on the fixture with the exception of the yoke.
This requires substantial motor power, and equally substantial supporting mechanics. These requirements drive the cost of a moving head fixture up quite high.

With a scanning head fixture, you're only moving a mirror that weighs not much more than you'd expect a small metal mirror to weigh, about as much as a piece of thick cardboard the same size.
This requires only small stepper motors and very simple support mechanics.
As Kevin points out above, this extremely light weight compared to a moving head also contributes to a scanners ability to move at a very high speed with little ramp up speed and almost instant stopping ability.
All in all, faster and less expensive than a fully moving fixture.

Another consideration with a scanning fixture is that you take a sizable hit in the "quality of optics" department with scanning heads reflecting all of their light through a lens, and THEN again off of a silvered metal mirror, as opposed to directly through the lens as with moving head fixtures.

Is the quality of optics really a major concern with moving fixtures?

They can be if you're projecting a complex gobo, or trying to mix very deep dichroic colors.

It can also be important if you just don't like looking at black holes in the middle of your field, or every color in the rainbow around the edge of your otherwise white field.

Vari-Lite has just released some new fixtures that are all about the optics, and there's a six to eight month back-order on them, which probably indicates that for some lighting designers optics are still very important.

I'd have to say "yes", optics can be important with moving fixtures.
Optics could also be unimportant if you don't worry about any of the above.

Does anyone have any experience with the cheaper Chauvet fixtures? I have some PARs from them, and they are not bad, but I'm not sure about cheeping out on scanners or moving heads. Anybody?

Right now I'm running a couple Martin scanners and a bunch of PARs, which I will soon upgrade to Par64 LED fixtures. But I would love to add in some more "intelligent" fixtures.

If I could afford it, I would definitely go for the Martin Mac fixtures, but that's not an option right now.

Sam

Sam,

I've used both and, while the Martins are of course superior, I think the Chauvets are a very good product for the money.

Elation's product are vastly superior to Chauvet, and their new Design Spot 700 is as bright as a Mac2000 running on 120V.


Kevin

I've used the Chauvet QSpot, and it's actually a pretty good fixture for the money.

On this page:

http://www.stagelightingprimer.com/#fixtures

Scroll down to Automated Fixtures.


That should answer some questions.