When I am on an ETC desk and find myself bored, I like to try to get as many flashing lights on the desk going as possible. (With the houselights up of course) I might hit Blackout, enable Quickstep, bring up a few subs, then go to the next submaster page. It's like Christmas, and it makes the console look very alarming/unhappy.
soundlight, Could you give me a link to a professional grade message kind of light? I only thought it would be good because I didn't know there were professional grade ones.
Would be an interesting thing to have ^_^
There probably aren't any professional grade products like this. At least I haven't seen them. Someone doing this on the professional level would either use a gobo, a projector, or something like an HES DL3... but they cost more than my house.
As Soundlight mentioned the problem is the output is VERY low on American DJ products. They are designed to work just fine in small dark clubs with all the other lights off. However the problem is what happens when you bring that up to a theater size scale (which typically means a throw distance of over 40 feet from the house lighting position to the grand drape). Plus you have far more ambient light for those low power LEDs to deal with. The web site says that the AMDJ LED Messenger consumes 55W of power to power 192 LEDs... that's less than 1/3W of power per LED. My Mag LED flashlight burns 3W. Take any typical LED flashlight and stand in the house underneath where you would be hanging the AMDJ fixture with the house lights on and see if you can see your flashlight on the grand. Now try it with the lights off. Now try it with the stage lights on. Distance and ambient light are killers to LED's. Even the top of the line professional theatrical LED's (like ETC's Selador products) need a lot of fixtures to be able compete with the other conventional stage lighting fixtures.
Generally any reference to an American DJ product around here is a joke. DJ gear is just fine in a dark club with short throw distances. However, when you scale it up to theater dimensions you might not even be able to see it on stage.
One other note. Any sort of really pro LED product is going to brag to you you about what type of LEDs it uses (Luxeon K2 or K3? Rebels?), and it's going to give you a wattage rating on that LED. The AMDJ product tells you that they use 5mm LEDs. So what? The size is meaningless information without knowing the manufacturer, model, and wattage. There is a HUGE difference in product quality in LEDs. There are tiny LEDs that are very bright and huge LEDs that are very dim. Without knowing what actual LED they are using you have no idea how bright a fixture is.
soundlight, I'm disappointed in you; and contend, to explain the phenomenon, one needs three words: Inverse Square Law.Two words: throw distance.
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