New Light source

Holy plasma batman!
 
I didn't catch if it's dimmable or not. Anyone?

Could always put a dual scroller on it. One roll for colors, another for various shades of neutral density. What's the worst that could happen?


Seriously, it's impressive, but I don't think it'll make any big splashes in our industry for at least a few more years. Too much R&D to take place first.
 
Cool! But...

Is it dimmable? How long does it take to reach full intensity or extinguish after dimmed?

I doubt it'll make its way into the market soon (LEDs have been around how long, and NY is just now testing them in street lights? I think the video is a tad too hopeful.). Despite CFLs (shudder) and LEDs we still have our incandescent lamps. We still are tentative about LED fixtures, let alone these "new-fangled plasma whoozywhatzits." Until some legislation creates a black market for incandescent lamps (I'm in California, and the beginning lighting class keep trying to explain they're going to "ban regular light bulbs and make you unemployed") I don't see the urgency to improve this technology being enough to inspire change throughout the industry.
If they are dimmable, it's more likely new fixtures that are designed for them will arise. Just like how we have LED PARs and LED Fresnels, as opposed to modification kits for our current fixtures. They're smaller, and while they might eventually help a lot of the issues we have with the lack of a perfect focal point, the amount of money and effort to get one into a Source Four, and then try to recreate the traditional look of the source four would be beyond what most spend on it. Assuming logistically it worked, we had it properly bench focused, the shutters and gobo/iris slot was still in the right spot, the color temperature is quite different. Because we can make warmer LEDs, it's likely to be fixable, but if they couldn't be warmed up for one reason or another, it'd be interesting to see how new gel colors would be created to mimic outputs of our other fixtures. I mean, some Hogs have different sections for choosing light colors based on how a gel color appears using a PAR can or Source Four, which is a minute difference in comparison to this. I don't see too many people giving up on our incandescent lamps in conventional fixtures yet.
If they can't be dimmed, perhaps in intelligents, where we can douse the source without dimming, they'd be useful? But again, I doubt we'll see them in theater any time soon.

Wow, what a rant. I know it wasn't brought up specifically for theatrical lighting, but I started pondering and...
Thank you for linking that, it was interesting!


Edit:
While I was typing this rant someone already brought up the dimmable question.
 
Must agree with the last few posters that the dimmible nature is important. Also it looks as if the responce time is rather slow. Just judging by what I saw in the video it looks like a great way for things like house lights, street lamps, and general flood with lots of light for a long time kind of stuff but I don't see control in there like I do with LEDs
 
Because they never say the name of the product, I can only guess. It it's the same thing as Luxim has on it's website, it may be much closer to us already than we thought...

http://www.lifi.com/pdfs/ProductBulletinLIFI-ENT-30-01.pdf
http://www.lifi.com/pdfs/AN005_EntertainmentLighting.pdf


If it's the correct product, it has a dimming range of 20-100%, forced air cooling, rated for 20,000hrs @ 12,000 lumens, with a power consumption of 230w.

Has anyone seen these in the field?

EDIT: You won't see this in conventionals for awhile unless equipped with a douser. They have a 20sec turn-on time, and I'd assume that means you can't drop them to below 20% intensity or they drop the arc. So no matter what, after being turned on for a show, they would have to stay on, at least at some intensity.
 
I would be less worried about dimming, as that is easily overcome (read: mechanical dimmers). I would say the squeaks might worry about technology like this in that it employs RF energy to generate light. However, with a light source like this with a 20000 hour life, it is totally worth it! Much better than buying $100+ lamps for moving lights all the time, it even beat replacing $12 HPLs every couple months.
 
my dad works for an energy savings company and says they looked into these lights and that they are mainly for areas like parking garages, but it will not really be marketable for a couple of years as the bulb with the mount was around $800 and would last 10-12 years under 80 degrees Fahrenheit but only 2 years above that. so who knows what could happen
 

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