You are totally right. I've talked a lot about how amazing the
Selador X7 Xtra's are. They really rock. But last time I checked it would cost around $60,000 :
shock: to properly light a 40' wide
cyc with them (It's been a year since I got that quote, so the price may have dropped). The color saturation is spectacular on these instruments and like nothing you can create with
gel. The energy savings will be great too. But there are still very few instruments that can compete with the incandescents and those that can are priced 10 times higher. We are starting to see them dominating some rock shows... but they have a lot higher budget than the typical high school or college that you and I deal with.
Heat is a problem but the better designed instruments (like those Seladors) are designed to handle that with good heat sinks. If I remember right, I think
Selador also slightly under drives their
LED's to keep them cooler and help them last longer.
Spectrum is and isn't a problem. It's pretty much impossible with the
current level of technology to make a true white light. However,
Selador, CK, and some of the other higher end products do an amazing job of additive mixing a very nice white.
Optics... yeah there are some issues there that someone's going to have to figure out before we get that S4
LED Upgrade kit that I've been dreaming about. However, I'm encouraged that the technology in my MagLED flash light is actually pretty good and I think there's been some good steps forward in this area in the last year or so.
I know none of them can talk about these things but I would love
to know what
ETC,
Altman,
Strand,
Selecon, or even
Rosco and
Apollo have going on in their R&D labs right now. We can't be THAT far away from leaving
LED wash lights in the dust and doing some serious work on
ellipsoidal LED's.