LED follow spots can turn concerts, business conferences, and weddings into an immersive experience for spectators. When your audience knows where to focus, performances like theatre scenes, songs, and motivational speeches become ingrained in their memory. But when you have to choose between buying brand-new LED follow spots or pre-owned options, it’s a difficult decision.

What’s clear is that the market for stage lighting, which includes LED follow spots, is growing rapidly. It’s expected to exceed a value of $856 million in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.1 percent up until 2033. This growth is thanks to live events getting more popular after the COVID-19 lockdown. As more people head to theaters, concerts, and other live performances, venues are looking towards LEDs as powerful solutions to improve the experience.

Let’s discuss how to choose LED follow spots that captivate your audience instead of lighting the stage.

LED follow spots are vital during events for various reasons. They guide the audience’s attention towards a specific performer and create dramatic effects during important moments in a live event. Here are some of the biggest reasons:

The most important use of an LED follow spot is to tell the audience, ‘Look at this person.’ This is needed during key speeches, emotional moments, and solos in live events. Whether you use a manually operated or automatic follow spot, it ensures that the audience is always looking at the right person at the right time. This way, they don’t miss crucial scenes in the chaos of a live stage with several moving parts.

Live concerts, musicals, and theatre performances—all of these have main and background characters. Or sometimes, each scene will have its own important character. In these cases, LED follow spots are used as a visual storytelling tool to show the audience who’s important. Whether it’s a singer in a quartet or a lead actor in a play, a follow spot will highlight whoever the key performer is in that given moment.

During performances, LED follow spots can create a sense of tension based on their flickering or intensity. They even increase the energy during exciting moments with fast movements or dynamic effects. These give the audience a visual cue as if telling them, ‘Pay attention!’ Similarly, a gradually narrowing beam can create isolation, urgency, or suspense.

Besides their main function, LED follow spots come in different models to track and highlight performers across the stage. These lights can be manually operated to follow performers or automated, with adjustable focus and color filters.

Traditionally, follow spots require a skilled technician to operate them. They control the light’s direction, focus, and intensity, tracking the performer’s movement in real-time. This gives the fastest response and ensures that the light follows them accurately during a performance. Because the technician has to be in sync with the whole performance, knowing where each performer will be, the job needs extensive skill and concentration.

New technology has allowed the development of automated follow spots, which use motors and sensors to follow performers. Though they’re not as accurate or responsive as manual operation, they still offer precision during events with a fixed movement pattern, like speeches or weddings.

Whether manually operated or automated, you can adjust the focus and intensity of an LED follow spot. The light can soften or sharpen the beam depending on its distance from the performer. It allows production teams to illuminate the performer without letting light spill onto the rest of the stage. Operators also have to adjust the brightness as performers move close to or far from the follow spot, ensuring a consistent level of lighting.

By using color filters that adjust the hue of the light, LED follow spots work as storytelling tools. Switching between colors like a warm orange tone or a cool blue can help set the scene for a performance, telling the audience about the environment without making it obvious. Some LED follow spots use gobos, which have patterns or templates to project shapes or textures on the stage. This can be used as a storytelling tool to show the audience how the character is feeling, without relying on narration.

Getting the right LED follow spot depends on your venue, performance, and level of control needed. Here’s what you need to consider:

In theatrical productions, you need an LED follow spot with precise focus control. But if it’s a concert, you need a powerful follow spot with adjustable intensity and colors to cover a wider stage.

The venue’s size affects the type of LED follow spot you need. So, bigger venues call for models with higher output so they can cover longer distances. In a smaller venue, you can use a compact unit with enough power to highlight performers at a close distance.

If you’re installing LED follow spots for any stage production, you have two options: brand-new lights or certified pre-owned LED follow spots. Both get the job done, but the right one for you depends on the budget.

If you choose brand-new LED follow spots, you get the latest features, complete warranties, and reliable performance that gives peace of mind. Since it will include the latest technology, you get vivid colors and new effects. Brand-new follow spots are recommended for large-scale productions and long-term installations.

For quality performance without the price tag, you can buy certified pre-owned LED follow spots instead. Each unit goes through extensive testing to ensure good-as-new results. It’s a cost-effective option for venues that want to experiment with cutting-edge fixtures and scale their setup while staying within budget.

XMLite differentiates itself from other suppliers by ensuring that each LED unit meets high standards. Whether you buy a brand-new or certified pre-owned unit, rest assured that it will perform without any hiccups. This allows you to focus on coordinating lights with sound and other effects to plan a memorable performance.

Selecting the right LED follow spots for event production purposes can be complicated, but what matters is buying from a reliable source. Thanks to their energy efficiency, dynamic effects, and adaptability to different events, they’re preferable for musical, theatre, and corporate performances.

Despite all these features, you don’t have to break the bank while buying follow spotlights. XMLite offers various pre-owned and brand-new LED follow spots, with each one undergoing rigorous testing to meet high standards for performance and reliability. Thanks to their impressive technology, they ensure spectacular visuals on a tight budget.

If you’re ready to upgrade your stage setup, browse the XMLite range of LED follow spots and find the right one for your show.