I realized that Additive & Subtractive mixing might be throwing some of the photometric comparisons off, so I wanted to add a little bit. (There is a great explanation about the two in the link below.)
Subtractive mixing (Usually CMY) is what you have in most movers. Additive mixing (Usually RGB) is what you find in most LED light sources. Here's a quick look using over-simplified numbers. Lets say you have a white light that at a given distance is throwing 10 lux, and an LED
par that is throwing 3 lux at the same distance when set it to white. That means the the first light is over three times as bright, right? Not so fast!
The LED RGB fixture may be putting out 1 lux red, 1 lux blue, and 1 lux green. When we
gel the white light blue, our transmission factor may be 8%, now our white light is only putting out .8 lux because we have subtracted the other 92% of it's output either with a gel or a CMY subtractive mixer unit. Our LED par is only running one
channel (blue) but is now putting out more light than our white light source.
Deep fundamental colors tend to have very low transmission factors and in those areas a lot of light from conventional fixtures needs to be wasted in order to produce the color. An additive mixer like a LED unit wastes almost none of it's output in the same application. So for now, what color you are trying to achieve will dictate what works better. The closer you are to white, the better the older fixtures shine. The closer you are to a deep primary, the better the LEDs shine.
As additive mixing wastes very little light in any color mode, it gets the hands down efficiency award! LEDs can be tuned to create light at the specific primary colors that the human eye detects. (Remember, the eye only sees three colors, the brain fills everything else in.) The ace-in-the-hole for LED units is that you can have a light that can be told to be whatever color you want, is very efficient and has no moving parts!
Color Theory:
http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/s...e_Color_Mixing