Why & When to use Par Cans for lights?

D

DDirector

Veteran
As the titles say.. When would you use a Par Can instead of traditional movie lights (Arri Tungsten, HMIs, Kino, etc)?

And what's the difference if you use Par Cans?
 
Par cans are very versatile lights actually. I first used them as architectural accent lights to throw light on the sides of buildings and background elements during doing a nighttime exterior in a small town. We also used them to throw beams of lights up through a steel grated bridge. We shot the lights up through the grated road and threw in some smoke to accent the beams. It looked cool. Those lights were part of our rental package, but I have subsequently picked up 4 PAR 64 cans that I keep in my kit. I got mine from a company that markets them for DJ or stage lighting and they set me back about $20 a piece. I also got some TVMP adapters to bolt to the yoke so that I can use them on stands. The thing that got me is that the lights will take from 120 watt bulbs up to 1000 watt bulbs and are the cheapest 1K lights I could find. The bulbs come in varying levels of spread, from very narrow spot to wide flood, which adds to their versatility. You can use them to shoot through cookies and add texture or shapes to backgrounds (Think venetian blinds) or blast them as beams or shafts of light coming into a room. You can use them with bounce boards or silks to make a soft light. You can pull the "Can" part of the light off and have a 1K open faced sealed beam light to do what ever you want with. ... and on and on. There are some PAR cans that are made that have a variable beam built into them, but they are more expensive. I just think that for the price, they are very versatile lights to have around.

Here is a link to the bulbs. If you move your cursor over the "Beam Spread" drop down list, you will see a graphic of the spread.

http://www.bulbamerica.com/stage-lighting/par-cans/par-can-bulbs/par64-bulbs.html
 
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One great reason to use par cans instead of traditional film lights is when you got no money. I had to light up a 175' roller rink a while ago and it would have been great to use 1k babys to create a consistent backlight on everyone, but it would have cost a fortune. I just opted for par cans instead and it saved us tons of cash. Didn't work quite as well, but it got us 90% of the way there.

Don't think they're inferior to any other traditional film lights though, as they are just very simple and have their own quirks. Some of the characteristics of Par cans are:



Elliptical beam spread.
The beam is a lot longer than it is tall, so if you want to cover a wide area with a par can, make sure the globe is oriented vertically. You can tell by looking at the number of facets on the globe, the more facets, the wider the beam spread will be in that direction. Sort of the opposite of what you might think.

Not good for a direct light source.
Because of all the little facets on the globe, it's almost as if it's a ton of different little sources. Try and make a hard cut with a flag and a par can. You'll get 9 different shadows of the flag on the wall...not very nice. They work much much better when you shoot them through frames of diff or if you bounce them off bead board.

Very light and simple construction.
Easy to rig up wherever and easy to fix.


One last little fun trick is what my friends and I call the P-can pie. A lot of the time when we do use parcans, we'll put 3 of em together on a triple header and a combo stand. You can even do a couple of these and shoot them through a 6x or 8x frame of diff and have a light thats nice and soft, but also bright and still fits on household circuits.
 
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PARs can be very useful as David spelled out concisely.
A Maxibrute, or "nine light" is just 9 PAR 64 lamps in the same housing, and you pay <$2500 for it!
PAR cans = Lotsa cheap lumens, just a bit harder to control than more conventional fresnels and open face units. As far as "traditional" Maxis' have been around a long time, probably more "traditional" than flos!
 
Almost every well equipped lighting truck will have two or three par lights on board. While most tend to go with the Source4 pars now as they are far brighter and they have interchangeable lenses, the older 64 and 56 cans still get plenty of use. Most often you see them used as bounce sources or through layers of diffusion. I have often rigged ten or more to a speedrail frame to provide a huge source.
 
There's no such thing as a "bad" light. There's just the light that is easier to set up and adjust, you just need to know what you are trying to do and the limitations of the light.

We lit this with on 500w par off a bounce board.
http://vimeo.com/31284596 ( pass is porch )
 
One use for them I want to try is to set them up as a soft source from high up. For example, I have done some very low budget horror stuff in the woods and have always wanted to be able to have a soft source from up high. We have rarely been able to get cranes or cherry pickers to get lights up high, but we could hang some silks up high, with rope from trees, and then shoot PARs from the ground into them. This would also work in the urban environment, when you can drape silks, unframed if necessary from ropes, between buildings or poles, then shoot the light into them with the PARS. I think that would look great. I have a narrative shoot coming up in late March that is going to have some extensive night exteriors, and I am definitely going to try to see if this works out.
 
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