CITATION — REFERENCE ENTRY
Types of Lantern — Theatrecrafts
- Key
- primrose-theatrecrafts-types-of-lantern
- Authors
- Primrose, Jon
- Issued
- 2025-4-29
- Type
- webpage
- Container
- Theatrecrafts
Raw CSL JSON
{
"URL": "https://theatrecrafts.com/pages/home/topics/lighting/types-of-lantern/",
"type": "webpage",
"title": "Types of Lantern",
"author": [
{
"given": "Jon",
"family": "Primrose"
}
],
"issued": {
"date-parts": [
[
2025,
4,
29
]
]
},
"accessed": {
"date-parts": [
[
2026,
10,
6
]
]
},
"container-title": "Theatrecrafts"
}
Claims
-
A flood is the simplest lantern type, a lamp and a reflector in a box with no lens, so it offers no beam focus control and is used mainly for lighting scenery or cloths and for working lights.
"a lamp and a reflector in a box, with no lens"
-
A followspot is a special profile lantern with extra handles, sights, a built-in colour changer and iris, usually of much higher power and mounted on a stand rather than a standard bar. The Source Four is an ellipsoidal profile using a 575 W lamp, designed by Entertec (David Cunningham and Greg Esakoff) and manufactured by ETC.
-
The Fresnel lantern uses a lens with stepped concentric circles on the front and a pebbled back, named for Augustin-Jean Fresnel; it was first used in stage lighting in the late 1920s and gives more control over beam angle than a flood but less than a profile.
-
The Parcan, a simple can holding a sealed-beam PAR (parabolic aluminised reflector) lamp that combines lamp, reflector and lens in one unit, came into use in the late 1960s in the rock and roll industry, introduced in the UK by the hire company ESP in 1968.
"first came into use in the late 1960s (introduced in the UK by concert hire company ESP in 1968)"
-
A profile lantern has a lens, a lamp, a reflector, shutters and a gate, and is named for its ability to project the shape of anything placed in the gate between the lamp and the lens.
"Profiles get their name from their ability to project the shape of anything placed in the gate of the lantern between the lamp and the lens."
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