Top 12 Professional Moving Lights
These TOP 12 Moving-Head lights have become a staple both in the touring music industry as well as installations in clubs & churches. Whether you’re a band, nightclub, event production company, church, or DJ – you’ll want to know about these lights.
There are a lot of guides online providing bad purchasing advice for a quick affiliate sale.
This is a PROFESSIONAL guide to industry standard, rider-ready Moving Light Fixtures!
This is NOT a guide for cheap, phony, entry level lighting.
Listed below are some of the most well engineered lights we have used, as well as budget options for an upcoming production. For whatever vibe you want to bring, a coordinated moving head light show can add magic to your set or live show.
If you are instead looking for static, LED par wash lights, check out our article here of the Top 16 LED Pars!
Top 3 Moving Wash Lights
Though you can never go wrong with a properly placed static wash to light your stage, the innovation in moving wash lights & specifically their affordability makes them an excellent choice for productions around the globe. While many of these fixtures now flex an impressive zoom range, the ability to re-focus on the fly with position pallets, use them as crowd blinders, even some with pixel effects, “aura” color zones they can be used either to simply light your stage or as eye-candy. In addition to this, I have seen many production companies begin using moving wash exclusively as their wash package at festivals, due to the wide range of acts and need to re-position wash for different performances & stage plots.
Chauvet – Rogue R2 Wash (MAP – $1600)
Rogue R2 Wash makes a valuable addition to rental and production inventories. Durable and dependable, this moving wash workhorse produces a bright, powerful light and offers four zones of LED control to pixel map its 19 (15 W) RGBW LEDs. An industry leading zoom range of 12-49° gives the Rogue R2 Wash the spread to cover even the largest areas. Smooth color mixing and six distinct dimming modes, simple and complex DMX channel profiles and powerCON in and out are just some of the other features that make this fixture a standout performer in any setting
Martin – Mac Aura (MAP – $3125)
The MAC Aura is an award-winning wash light that lighting designers have turned to the world over due to its versatility as a powerful beam and wash luminaire of the highest caliber. The result of out-of-the-box creative thinking, it is the first LED moving head wash light to combine multicolor beam LEDs with a backlight LED array that takes the synthetic look out of LED wash lights. It’s still high in demand and on many festivals and productions around the globe.
Clay Paky – A.leda B-EYE K10 (MAP – $7400)
The A.leda B-EYE K10 is a high performance wash light, a breathtaking beam light, and a creator of completely new spectacular visual effects. Its unparalleled versatility makes it an extremely interesting creative tool for all lighting designers.
The B-EYE is first and foremost an excellent quality wash light. It is able to wash surfaces with colors at any distance, making the most of its light source. The B-EYE is brighter than any LED-wash with the same rated power, thanks to its special optical unit with a truly amazing lumen/watt ratio, designed and built by Clay Paky. The zoom ranges from 4 degrees to 60 degrees and it is therefore suitable both for environments with low ceilings (small theatres and TV studios, for example), where large angles are extremely useful, and for shows in arenas or large environments, where a tight zoom is perfect.
Top 3 Moving Spots / Profiles
Most every professional production makes some use of moving spots & profiles nowadays. These robust, tried and true fixtures are a go-to choice for many lighting designers & professional installers, and are a must have for any top tier theatrical production.. Modern advancements such as LED light sources, 16-bit dimming, shutter framing, and gobo animation means that some of these fixtures can create a huge variety of smooth or rigid looks and be used in a wide range of applications.
Chauvet – Rogue R3 Spot (MAP $2,649)
This feature-packed moving spot has a bright 300 W LED light engine that produces an even field of light, as well as rotating and static gobos, an 8 position and split-color enabled color wheel, and three facet prism to create stunning looks. A quick moving zoom range of 13 – 37° adds to its flexibility of use by giving the Rogue R3 Spot the ability to cover large areas. Rogue R3 Spot delivers intense output, crisp optics, sharp focus and maintains a value proposition designed to maximize ROI.
High End Lighting – Solaframe 750 (MAP $7,700)
SolaFrame 750 is the most compact framing fixture in the Sola Series family of automated tools.
Featuring a compact footprint but a huge feature set, SolaFrame 750 is a perfect fit for smaller to medium-sized venues, and its 11,300 lumens can easily cut through the competition. With 6 – 50 degree zoom, rotating gobo wheel plus fully continuous animation and much, much more, SolaFrame 750 offers the widest array of effects currently available in a fixture of its size.
Martin – Mac Viper Profile (MAP – $16,000, USED – $7,000)
The MAC Viper Profile is a new breed of high-output profile luminaire with an exceptional feature set, superior light quality and a highly efficient optical system. It outperforms all market-leading profiles in the 1200-watt range and is even an alternative to 1500-watt fixtures. The Viper Profile is not only brighter, it is also a faster and more compact solution. With its 1000-watt HID source, the Viper consumes less power, making it over 50% more efficient than its 1200-watt rivals.
Top 3 Hybrid Moving Lights:
These incredibly versatile and impeccably designed Beam-Spot-Wash fixtures can transition seamlessly between any mode of your choosing. They are a top choice for lighting designers across the globe solely due to their flexibility.
Chauvet – Intimidator Hybrid 140SR (MAP – $1,369.99)
Though we’re admittedly not huge fans of the ‘“Intimidator” line, the Hybrid 140SR is a nice exception, packing the features of a pro-level lighting fixture at an affordable price-point. Fitted with a smooth 140 W discharge light engine and motorized focus, it’s beams and gobo’s are crisp at almost any distance. Two overlapping independently controlled prisms, and a dual gobo wheels allow for gobo morphing and amazing mid-air projections. It’s lacking some nice features like CMY mixing & has only 8 Bit dimming.
If you’re looking for something that’s bright enough for a large outdoor stage, this fixture may not be quite there. But its robust design and versatile nature makes it a tough competitor in the Hybrid Moving Lighting market.
Martin – Mac Axiom Hybrid (MAP – $9,370)
The MAC Axiom™ Hybrid is a true all-in-one product, combining beam and spot into one compact unit that also offers diffused wash functionality. The high-precision optical system offers exceptional contrast, both in mid-air and projection as well as a surprisingly flat field, usually not seen with this short-arc lamp technology. The implementation of the MAC Viper CMY color palette gives designers the advantage of unlimited choice from subtle pastel shades to deep and saturated colors. All this comes in a small footprint and lightweight product which delivers superior performance in the best feature vs. size and weight ratio available in the market.
Robe – MegaPointe (MAP – $10,500)
The MegaPointe elevates the original all-in-one fixture to a whole new level. Unleash your creativity using the bright sharp parallel beams, excellent gobo projection, precise movement, smooth CMY colour mixing and dimming plus a multitude of beam splitting, wash and shaping effects.
The Robe R&D team worked with Osram to provide a 470W lamp that aligns perfectly with the cutting edge optical system. This design provides a brilliant, crystal clear, razor-edged beam, adjustable from a punchy 1.8 out to a wide 42 degree zoom.
Top 3 Beam Moving Lights:
Hard edge fixtures like beams are increasingly popular in designs for their long throws, cutting light, and overall brightness. They’re a staple in the festival market where outdoor stages are commonplace and big crowds and massive stages are the norm. If you’re looking for an affording moving head light, that is still rider-ready and in the “pro-lighting” category, then check these lights below out.
Chauvet – Rogue R2X Beam (MAP – $1699)
Rogue R2X Beam is the light cannon of the Rogue series, boasting an intense 134,000 lux at 15 meters from its 231 W Osram Sirius lamp. This fully-featured beam can be focused down to 1 degree for extremely focused aerial effects, and comes with 14 fixed colors in a fully scrollable, variable speed color wheel, which also provides split-colors perfectly. Additionally, the unit features individually controllable and overlapping 8 and 5-facet prisms for an endless supply of creative and dynamic beam looks. Frost and focus options ensure even light distribution and the unit is equipped with RDM and DMX protocols.
Elation – Platinum Beam 5r Extreme (MAP – $1,880)
Affordable, gig ready fixture with robust design and built in Wireless DMX. A bit lacking on brightness but works great for indoor venues. Armed with an 8 facet rotating prism and frost effects, super fast 16 bit 3-phase pan/tilt motors, strobe (1-18 fps), dimming 0-100%, and focus, (12) colors including UV, CTO, CTB, and white, (8) metal rotating, indexing, interchangeable gobos & more.
Clay Paky – Sharpy (MAP – $1,995)
Sharpy is a 189W moving beam light with an unprecedented brightness, Sharpy produces a perfectly parallel, laser-like beam with an incredible output. Sharpy is also groundbreaking for the purity of its beam, which is sharply defined and free of any halo or discoloration around the edges. It offers 14 different colors and 17 gobos, allowing you to change the shape of the beam and create an array of spectacular mid-air effects. It is your standard go-to Beam fixture for many productions.
Limitless Lights and Sound LLC acts as a broker between you and major lighting and audio manufacturer’s, aiding you with the best purchasing advice & offering you a better price than most online dealers. Please contact us directly if you are interested in upgrading your lighting or sound system, so that we can personally assist your AV needs.
