Basics 5. The fixture zoo: who is who in a lighting rig

The first four lessons were about the language: channels, addresses, profiles. Now let’s meet the ones listening to that language — the fixtures themselves. There are a lot of names and they sound cryptic («wash», «beam», «blinder», «hazer»), but behind each one is a simple idea: what exactly the fixture draws in the room. Let’s work out what each is capable of, how many channels it eats and what a beginner actually needs.

Three questions that explain everything

Any lighting fixture can be described by three answers:

What it does with light — floods a large area with soft light, punches a narrow beam, draws a pattern on the floor, or simply flashes.
Whether it moves — hangs still or turns on motors.
How many channels it takes — anywhere from one to forty.

Static fixtures: light that stays put

Fig. 1 — Static fixtures: PAR, LED panel, LED bar, strobe, blinder, ultraviolet

PAR — the workhorse of any venue. A short cylinder or «can» full of LEDs, throwing a soft, wide pool of light forwards. PARs are what wash the stage in colour and build the overall background. Cheap, reliable, light. Usually 3–8 channels.

LED panel / wash light — the same purpose as a PAR, but with a more even and more powerful pool; often with an adjustable angle (zoom). Used to cover large areas and to light walls.

LED bar — an elongated strip of LEDs. It comes in two kinds: plain (all LEDs one colour, 3–8 channels) and pixel, where every segment is controlled separately. A pixel bar with 8 RGB segments will eat 24 channels or more, but it can run a «chase» inside itself.

Strobe — a fixture built for one effect: rapid bright flashes. Few channels (2–4): intensity, rate, sometimes flash duration. A powerful strobe can freeze the motion of a dance floor.

Blinder — large warm lamps aimed at the audience. The job is to dazzle the crowd for a second at the peak of a track. Usually 1–4 channels.

Ultraviolet (blacklight) — emits invisible UV, which makes white clothing and special paints glow. A party effect, 1–4 channels.

Dimmer pack — a box with several outlets that controls the brightness of ordinary incandescent lamps over DMX. One channel per outlet. If you have a theatre space with old lighting, it is almost certainly run through a pack like this.

LED tape decoder (pixel controller) — turns ordinary RGB tape into a DMX fixture. Handy for lighting a bar, a stage front or scenery.

⚠️ Careful: powerful fixtures sometimes come with their own power supply and a minimum voltage requirement. Electrics are covered in detail in lesson eleven.

Moving fixtures: light that travels

Fig. 2 — Moving and effect fixtures: spot head, wash head, beam, scanner, derby

Moving head — a fixture on two motors: one turns it horizontally (pan), the other tilts it (tilt). The head is the most capable and the most channel-hungry class, from 8 to 40 channels. Its inner workings are covered in lesson seven. There are three varieties:

Type of head	Beam	What it is for
Spot	Narrow, sharp, with gobo patterns	Beams, patterns on the floor, accents
Wash	Wide, soft, no defined edge	Colour washes, lighting people and scenery
Beam	A very narrow, dense column of light	Dramatic «swords» in haze, aerial graphics

You will also find 2-in-1 and 3-in-1 hybrids: one head that does spot, wash and beam. They cost more but replace three fixtures.

Scanner — the head’s older sibling: the lamp stays put and the beam is deflected by a mirror. It moves noticeably faster than a head, but covers a smaller angle. Less common today, and cheap on the second-hand market.

Effect fixtures («derby», «moonflower», multi-beam) — inexpensive boxes that scatter dozens of coloured beams around the room. Not many channels (3–9). They live in clubs and bars: a lot of effect for little money, though control is crude — usually just mode selection and speed.

Laser — a story of its own. Over DMX you normally control only the basics (on, pattern selection, speed, colour), while complex shows are drawn by dedicated software through an ILDA connector.

⚠️ Careful: the laser is the one class of fixture that can injure an audience member. Never aim beams into the audience’s eye level and never run a laser outside the conditions stated by the manufacturer.

Atmosphere: without it half the effect is lost

A beam is only visible in the air when there is something suspended in that air. In a clean room a beam head just gives you a pool on the floor; in light haze it gives you that dense «sword».

Fixture	What it gives	Notes
Fog machine	Thick clouds of fog	Runs hot, eats a lot of power, the fog reads as «clouds»
Hazer	An even, invisible haze	Ideal for beams: it does not look like smoke and lingers longer
Low fog	Creeps along the floor	Needs ice or a dedicated machine; spectacular for a first dance
Bubbles, snow, confetti	Special effects	Controlled over DMX the same way — usually 1–2 channels

💡 Tip: if your budget forces a choice between «one more fixture or a hazer», buy the hazer. It makes the work of all your other lights visible and visually doubles the size of your rig.

⚠️ Careful: fog machines put particles into the air that older fire detectors react to. In an unfamiliar venue always warn the management and check whether the fire alarm is disarmed for the event.

How many channels each class eats

A rough table — useful when you are working out whether your rig fits into 512 channels.

Class of fixture	Typical channels	Comment
Blinder, UV, strobe	1–4	Very simple
PAR, plain LED bar	3–8	Depends on the number of colours and whether it strobes
Effect fixture («derby»)	3–9	Often just modes and speed
Fog machine, hazer	1–2	Output and fan
Pixel bar	20–100	Every segment has its own set of channels
Scanner	7–14
Wash head	10–20
Spot / beam head	12–24
3-in-1 hybrid, top-end models	25–40

💡 Tip: on most fixtures the mode with more channels gives you more control (separate control of each LED, say, or 16-bit movement). But if channels are tight, choose the leaner mode — the difference is often not critical.

What to buy first: the boring but honest advice

The classic beginner’s mistake is buying one expensive moving head. A single head in an empty room looks poor; light works in sets.

A sensible first kit for a small venue:

Four PARs — the wash, the foundation of the whole picture.
A hazer — so the beams become visible.
Two heads (spot or hybrid) — movement and accents.
A strobe or blinder — for the peaks.

A rig like that eats roughly 60–80 of your 512 channels — comfortably inside one DMX line — and it will carry a wedding, a corporate party or a small club.

📍 How this looks in SvetoMaster: when you add a fixture you set its type (wash light, moving head, scanner, strobe, fog machine, laser and so on). The type affects both how the fixture is drawn in the 3D visualiser and which tools apply to it: movement effects are offered only to fixtures that pan and tilt, while the live-mode «Smoke» control goes to fog machines. So an honestly chosen type saves you time later.

Key points

A fixture is described by three questions: what it lights with, whether it moves, how many channels it eats.
PARs and wash lights flood colour; bars give linear light and pixel effects; strobe, blinder, UV are single-effect fixtures.
A head can be spot (patterns), wash (flood) or beam (dense column); a scanner is fast but covers less.
Fog or haze is essential if you want to see beams in the air.
Channel appetite grows from 1–4 on simple fixtures to 40 on top-end heads.
Light works as a set: wash + atmosphere + movement + accent.

Coming next: we will take on the most noticeable property of light — colour. Why white from RGB comes out greyish, how a colour wheel differs from LEDs, what CMY is, and why the very same «blue» looks different on two different fixtures.

Next lessonColour: RGB, RGBW, colour wheels and CMY