15:57 on Tuesday 16 April 2024

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This lantern is the most complex theatre lantern, and gives the highest level of control over the beam. The trade off for this control is in price and complexity.

The basic structure of the lantern is :-

• A lamp housing containing a bulb and a reflector;
• A gate, usually with beam shaping shutters and runners for additional beam shaping;
• A lens tube, containing a set of optics that focus the image of the gate.

With all the beam shaping shutters fully retracted and no additional beam shaping in the gate runners, the central hole of the gate will be projected out of the front of the lanern giving a round beam of light.

This beam can be focused by moving the lens up and down the lens tube in the same way a camera can be focused. On zoom profile spots a pair of lenses can be moved independantly allowing the size of the beam to be adjusted as well as focused. These optics work in the same way as a telephoto lens on a camera.

By pushing in one of the shutters a flat edge to the beam can be created. Ideal to prevent the beam spilling onto scenery or the procenium wall.

The gate runners can take a whole set of accessories all aimed at altering the beam before it is focused.

An iris is a mechanical device that can be open and closed to give a central circle of varying sizes. These are used very much in follow spots where the beam size needs to be adjusted to match the person they are following.

A gobo is a piece of metal with a patern cut out of it. When this is placed in the gate runners the patern can be focused by the lenses and projected onto the stage. These are used for anything from special effects (for example, light flooding through a window with the bars of the window in the beam) to paterns on the stage (such as leaf patterns for a forest scene).