Pangolin Safety Scan lenses - looking for "rough" experience-based advice

[Bradfo69]

True, but....

(there is always a "but")

When viewing the show the other night with the -6 in place, and sitting watching it from 13-14 meters (I calculated that for you), a beam in a fan seemed to be the diameter of a golf ball in that first third and, larger than a tennis ball by the time it was close to me. Maybe to a lay person, who knows it may be fine but, for me, it was un-watchable. Sort of like making your laser into a DJ LED club light like an American DJ or Chauvet unit. I'd like to see a -3 or -4 by comparison and actually measure the power level sometime.

[White-Light]

This was the reason Bill came up with lenses of variable power because if you get too much divergence, the beams appear "fuzzy".

The idea is to use the lowest power lens you can to make it safe at the closest part of the audience to keep the beams further back reasonably sharp, and if it's still too diverged at distance, then a combination of BAM and lens to allow less divergence to be used (bearing in mind you're always going to want a reasonable size in the closest part).

That's also the reason for using 1/2 lenses, because a full lens makes for a very fuzzy show whilst a 1/2 lens, by maintaining the sharpness of the beams overhead, makes any softness in the audience area less noticeable.