DC Event Lighting and Sound

About Us

DC Event Lighting and Sound is a full-service provider for lighting, staging and sound solutions to the special event industry catering to the greater Washington D.C., Virginia and Maryland areas.

What We Do

Planning a corporate event? Our rental department has what you need to flawlessly execute your next corporate resentation, product launch and more. Inquire with DCELS about rojector rentals, pipe and base, uplighting, branded corporate gobo, and more.

Types of lighting fixture

Within the groups of "wash" and "spot" light, there are other, more specific types of fixtures.

Profile

These fixtures feature a compound lens which allows the designer to place obstructions within the image path which are then projected. These obstructions could be "gobos" or shutters. A profile is a spot light, but allows for precise focusing.

Fresnel

A Fresnel is a type of wash light and is named as such due to the Fresnel lens it features as the final optical device within the chain.

Traditionally theatre and stage lighting has been of the "generic" type. These are lights which are focussed, geled, and then simply dimmed to give the effect the designer wants. In recent years the emergence of moving lights (or automated lights) has had a substantial impact of theatre and stage lighting.

A typical moving light allows the designer to control the position, color, shape, and strobing of the light beam created. This can be used for exciting effects for the entertainment or dancefloor use. Moving lights are also often used instead of having a large number of "generic" lights. This is because one moving light can do the work of several generics.

In the UK the nomenclature is slightly different from North America. This article primarily uses the North American terminology. Although there is some adoption of the former naming conventions it has been normal to categorise lanterns by their lens type, so that what in the US is known as a spotlight is known as a Profile or a Fresnel/PC (Pebble/Plano/Prism Convex) in the UK. A Spotlight in the UK often refers to a Followspot. The following definitions are from a North American point of view. UK naming conventions are used in most of the world, in fact most North American theatres will also use the UK terms except when talking in a more general sense (i.e. get a spotlight to focus on that set piece, or 'flood this area').

In Australia and many other places, the lamps inside a theatrical fixture are referred to asbubbles. In North American English, a bubble refers to the protrusion that occurs when one's body (or other oily substance) contacts the lamp. Heat will cause the portion of the lamp which has oil on it to expand when it is on creating the bubble, and causing the lamp to explode. That is why one should never directly touch the glass portion of a lamp. Cleaning with rubbing alcohol will remove the oil.