Conventional Fixtures - the cost of lamping fixtures; or long-life lamps vs. high-output lamps

[church]

Earlier this week I had a discussion with two other rental company owners and the President of a theatre production company that owns five small theatres and successfully produces their own shows. The topic was the merits of using long life lamps or the high output lamps. Many times on Controlbooth I read links on the light output from different fixtures etc. I will not repeat these discussions. However my operation is small rental house and is not my primary source of income whereas for the others it is their only source of income. I normally lamp my fixtures with HPL575 or GLCs and also the BTH575 because I like the light output and quality. All the others are now using HPL575X, GLA and are staying with BTL because of lamp life.

Here it is if they lamp the same as me then their lamp costs increase by a factor of 5, they changed to the long life lamps and the customers did not notice any change in light output.

Before everyone tells me you can get the lamps cheaper - we are not buying lamps in small quantities between the four of us we spent $68k in the last year and we are not paying the same price as the average user. In fact we supplly the average users with lamps in this area. In the last year my three colleagues have switched to the long life versions except me as I have a number of cases of lamps to work through but I shall probably follow the same route.

The high output (short life lamps) are only used for special applications.

Here is my question is this the experience of other rental company owners and users in other parts of North America?

[SerraAva]

In my area, whenever a piece of gear is rented, it is always long life version of whatever lamp it uses. You can request the high output versions however.

In my own experiences, I use long life, namely HPL750X. The 750w lamp puts out roughly the same amount of light as a standard life HPL575, 16400 lumen vs 16520. In power tight situations, I generally then use standard HPL575s, because they put out the same amount of light I am use to seeing with HPL750Xs. Also, I can then mix and match between 750Xs and 575s with out fear of one being much brighter then the other.

As you also stated church, if I run into a situation where 750Xs aren't enough, I can then go up to 750 standards, namely when I am using lekos as spot lights. You also hit the nail on the head that it costs 5x as much money to run standards over regulars. If you on average used your lights for about 6 hours a day, you are replacing all your lamps once a year for long life at 1500 hours. So let's say you have 100 fixtures, that's 2 grand a year in lamps at 20 bucks a lamp. 10 grand a year for standard. I can think of a lot of toys to buy with an extra 8 grand a year, like more fixtures for example.

[Grog12]

As a renter not a rental company, I usually assume that unless otherwise specified they're coming with long life lamps. This assumption comes from me thinking that the rental house wants to change lamps less often ie less labor and less lamp ordering.

[BillESC]

We lamp with the long life version.

[David Ashton]

There is an important factor missing in your discussions, namely the cost of power wasted, I think you will find that cost is greater than your lamp-life costs.Unless your power is much cheaper than ours.

[church]

your point is correct however as a rental company supplying the lamps we are not paying for the power costs - just the lamp costs. Also the extra 175W of power consumed by the HPL750X lamp at the rates we pay in Canada for hydro is still cheaper than cost of buying the extra lamps if you use the HPL575 lamp.

What is interesting about this is the many debates on this Board re light output from fixtures and the merits of different lamps. There is a subtlety in the use of the lamps and fixtures that we have not openly discussed.

One of the merits, as discussed above, of the S4 is that with the 750W version is that it gives us options on lamping using the different 575W and 750W lamps to achievelight output v consumable costs that don't exist with other fixtures.

To illustrate, I use GLAs in my non S4 fixtures except where I really need output at which point I will lamp the fixture with a GLC but there is no way increase the light output beyond this because I get more light from these fixtures with a GLC than a FEL lamp. This may change if I can ever obtain the SPH575 lamp. If this happens then I should have a higher light output option. Therefore my options with a non S4 fixture are less than a S4 fixture with a 750W lamp cap. Having said that I have no plans to ditch my non S4 fixtures as they still give good performance using the modern lamps but I would never lamp them with an FEL or EHD lamp.

I think we all agree that when you own the fixtures and pay for the lamps going into them it gives you a very different perspective on this topic than if you use someone else's fixtures.

[derekleffew]

The attached table shows all available incandescent lamps for an ETC SourceFour® 26°. By your logic, allthingstheatre, everyone should be using DimmerDoublers and the standard 77V lamp (Oh wait, you can't. It's only available for 120V systems.) Not to start the 110 vs. 220 argument again, but you guys really get hosed in terms of efficiency with the long-life lamps, don't you?

Currently in Las Vegas as a residential customer, I pay ~USD 0.113 (AUD 0.172) per KWH. Due to scale, hotels/casinos pay significantly less.

I'm all for a lighting shop making a fair profit, but I would feel "cheated" if rental ETC fixtures came with anything other than HPL750/115 or HPL575/115 lamps. That's standard in this town in my industry, which admittedly, is not theatre, and, also admittedly, the cost of lamps or power are not major factors. On the other hand, the cost of labor for relamping IS a major factor. In the rental industry, I suspect lamp life will be shorter due to mishandling/frequent-handling than a long-running production. Perhaps ruinexplorer, VegasLites, Icewolf08, or Sean, et al. could speak to this. Most of my rentals are one week in duration and 5-10% spare lamps are included. Often we'll need to change a failed lamp during initial testing and seldom after that.

My 2¢.

[icewolf08]

We don't actually do a lot of rentals as our theatre maintains a sizable inventory. However, I do lamp all of our Source Fours with high output lamps. Even without a side-by-side comparison I can see the difference in color temperature, and the long life lamps a significantly warmer. Our guest designers expect to see the intensity and color temp of the high output lamps when they come, so that is what I give them.

While one might argue that it is more cost effective to use the long life lamps it isn't always practical. Consider that the HPL575/115 (which is what I use primarily) rings in at 3250K and 16520 lumens. If I want a long life lamp that is close to the same light output I have to go to the HPL750/115X at 3050K and 16400 lumens. So, in moving to long life I end up with less output, higher power consumption, and warmer color temp. Adding all of that up totally negates the cost savings on the lamp (in my opinion).

[Sean]

Originally Posted by derekleffew

I'm all for a lighting shop making a fair profit, but I would feel "cheated" if rental ETC fixtures came with anything other than HPL750/115 or HPL575/115 lamps. That's standard in this town in my industry, which admittedly, is not theatre, and, also admittedly, the cost of lamps or power are not major factors. On the other hand, the cost of labor for relamping IS a major factor. In the rental industry, I suspect lamp life will be shorter due to mishandling/frequent-handling than a long-running production. Perhaps ruinexplorer, VegasLites, Icewolf08, or Sean, et al. could speak to this. Most of my rentals are one week in duration and 5-10% spare lamps are included. Often we'll need to change a failed lamp during initial testing and seldom after that.

My 2¢.

OK, so.....

I'd be pretty pissed if a rental showed up with long-life lamps. Do you also buy B-size templates "'cause we already had some"?

The reality is that we as an industry are always trying to eek out those last 10 lumens, get the automation to (safely) run the cue 5 seconds faster, etc. As much as we like to think it, we are not a "green" industry. We as a group regularly choose more expensive, less renewable products because of the real (or perceived) advantages in cost or performance. This situation is a case of the latter.

The fixtures are built around the 300 hour lamps. Yes, you can get the lamp to last longer if it runs "cooler".....or you could dim it down. But the color temp isn't going to be there, the intensity isn't going to be there. It would be cheaper to use older lights too.

I would expect rental gear to come with functional 300 hour lamps. There would be some angry phone calls if I turned on the rental gear and it didn't match the house gear. I have not noticed a shortened lamp life in rental gear. Honestly, we spend more time replacing lamps in work lights than any other unit. We use S4 pars as works, so we just grab them from the pile of units. However, they end up on for hours at a time, so the "regular" HPL's burn out quite quickly (we do try to run our works at ~85%) We have started using 120v HPL's in the handful of units that are always work lights. All our other units have 115v lamps.

Our inventory is all 575w. I've made the decision to NOT use 750w lamps as a matter of course (though we do stock some for use when needed). We do large shows, often with positions that are very difficult to reach. 750w lamps burn through so much more gel, and mixing them into the inventory would make for quite a confusing situation. So, they're for "when we need them".

OK, so I really shouldn't be posting at 6AM. Maybe I'll go back to bed.

--Sean

[David Ashton]

Originally Posted by derekleffew

The attached table shows all available incandescent lamps for an ETC SourceFour® 26°. By your logic, allthingstheatre, everyone should be using DimmerDoublers and the standard 77V lamp (Oh wait, you can't. It's only available for 120V systems.) Not to start the 110 vs. 220 argument again, but you guys really get hosed in terms of efficiency with the long-life lamps, don't you?

Currently in Las Vegas as a residential customer, I pay ~USD 0.113 (AUD 0.172) per KWH. Due to scale, hotels/casinos pay significantly less.


My 2¢.

Now let's settle down here little pitbull, I said that the factor of wasted power needed to be considered, I'd hardly class that as starting an argument.