Abandon teaching incandescent ?

I don't know of a single theater in Seattle... with the exception of a couple of horrible middle and elementary schools... that are all LED houses. My guess is the average professional theater's inventory in this area is maybe 70% incandescent and 30% LED. There are plenty of places with no LED's still. Yes the day is coming that we won't need to teach incandescent lighting, but it's still a generation away.
 
Last edited:
If you said in 1982 when AutoCAD version 1 was released that hand drafting would be not de around in a generation, most people would have laughed. Yet it was well on its way out in 10 years.

Things have a way of progressing faster than one imagines.

And how long is a generation today anyways? Googling suggests near 30 years. I dont think youxll be able to buy new HPLs in 30 years. Pretty sure I wont be around to pay up if you can.
 
If you said in 1982 when AutoCAD version 1 was released that hand drafting would be not de around in a generation, most people would have laughed. Yet it was well on its way out in 10 years.

Things have a way of progressing faster than one imagines.

And how long is a generation today anyways? Googling suggests near 30 years. I dont think youxll be able to buy new HPLs in 30 years. Pretty sure I wont be around to pay up if you can.

I still hand draft, so it's not totally dead!
 
I don't know of a single theater in Seattle... with the exception of a couple of horrible middle and elementary schools that are all LED houses. My guess is the average professional theater's inventory in this area is maybe 70% incandescent and 30% LED. There are plenty of places with no LED's still. Yes the day is coming that we won't need to teach incandescent lighting, but it's still a generation away.
@gafftaper How do you suspect your area's remaining incandescent venues will deal with / afford to upgrade their existing inventory when replacement incandescent sources become unobtainium? I'd gamble demand and supply will prevail until there are no more suitable incandescent sources left standing.
Popular rumor has it that Source Four lamps may be the last incandescents standing and then there'll be none.
I think we've played this game here before but, what the heck, @DELO72 (and @any other lamp manufacturers) Care to comment / speculate / play the game?
This is clearly going to be like finding a new GZ34 / KT88 / 6L6 for your vacuum tube amplifiers and receivers, a vibrator for your car radio (No! Not for your significant other) new rolls for your player piano or new virgin cylinders for your early Edison recorder. [Mark my words; you heard it here first, or second, or fifty-fourth.)
EDIT: Added an inadvertently missed closing bracket.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Last edited:
If HPL's go away (unlikely, I'll get to that in a moment) but LED ellipsoidals don't come down in price, then the lighting manufacturers are going to effectively put hundreds of theatres out of business by forcing them to die a slow death.

But I don't see HPL's going away for a very long time. There are hundreds of thousands of Source 4 fixtures out there that work perfectly well. Lamp manufacturers would be silly to stop serving that market.
 
If you said in 1982 when AutoCAD version 1 was released that hand drafting would not be around in a generation, most people would have laughed. Yet it was well on its way out in 10 years.

Things have a way of progressing faster than one imagines.

And how long is a generation today anyways? Googling suggests near 30 years. I don't think you'll be able to buy new HPL's in 30 years.
Pretty sure I wont be around to pay up if you can.
@BillConnerFASTC At the sprightly age of 67, don't bet on not being around at 97; here in my "Retirement home with assisted living" we have many residents in their nineties, several gentleman 93, 94 and 95. Currently, our eldest resident is a lady who attained 98 years of age this past February 1st.
This afternoon, each and every one of us were rousted for a full building evacuation fire drill to satisfy the decree of our local fire fighters. Each and every month, one or two floors of our four story building have to evacuate for a fire drill. Once or twice annually we evacuate the entire building with two representatives from the Hamilton, Ontario fire department on hand to record the time from the sounding of the bells 'til the last person exits the building, including our cooks, maintenance, PSW's and management. Fortunately today the rain let up and it was 51 degrees (F) at the time of the drill. During my penance here, we've had two full evacuations in the rain and one in the midst of a below freezing winter with 5" of snow and ice on the ground and snow still steadily falling. The snow was steadier than many of my fellow inmates, don't bet on not attaining 97, you may not remember your name but you'll likely still be able to hide your own Easter eggs.
BTW; this afternoon's exodus occurred in six (6) minutes; not too shabby for a bunch of old codgers who are not permitted to ride our 'vator during a fire or fire drill.
EDIT: Added an inadvertently omitted comma.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Last edited:
If HPL's go away (unlikely, I'll get to that in a moment) but LED ellipsoidals don't come down in price, then the lighting manufacturers are going to effectively put hundreds of theatres out of business by forcing them to die a slow death.

But I don't see HPL's going away for a very long time. There are hundreds of thousands of Source 4 fixtures out there that work perfectly well. Lamp manufacturers would be silly to stop serving that market.
@Darin @BillConnerFASTC and @DELO72 How many "hundreds of thousands of" drafting pencils, erasing shields, set squares and straight edges ( not to mention French curves.) do you think were in regular use as recently as 1982 as Mr. Conner posted?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
That's not an apt comparison, as all of the things you mentioned can be used in other applications. Conversely, discontinuing the manufacturing/sales of HPL lamps will (eventually) render Source 4's into fancy doorstops.

If the lighting industry thinks that every theatre company with $50,000 annual budgets will magically raise the money to convert all of their fixtures to LED, they have a big surprise coming
 
But I don't see HPL's going away for a very long time. There are hundreds of thousands of Source 4 fixtures out there that work perfectly well. Lamp manufacturers would be silly to stop serving that market.

Wrong. Over 5 Million Source Fours. Not “hundreds of thousands”. Halogen lamps aren’t going anywhere for a long time. Our global sales of halogen lamps last year was up from the year before.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wrong. Over 5 Million Source Fours. Not “hundreds of thousands”. Halogen lamps aren’t going anywhere for a long time. Our global sales of halogen lamps last year was up from the year before.

I stand corrected, as you make my point even stronger. The lamp manufacturers aren't abandoning that customer base
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wrong. Over 5 Million Source Fours.
From http://www.etcconnect.com/About/News/25-Years-of-the-ETC-Source-Four-Fixture.aspx :
Since launching at LDI in 1992, ETC has shipped nearly 3.8 million Source Four fixtures.
Although the page is not dated, since it's celebrating the 25th anniversary of a product launched in 1992, my Scooby detective skills tell me it's as of 2017.

BUT, and it's a big butt, there HAS to be more than four million PAR64 cans/fixtures out there, and those lamps, well...
https://www.controlbooth.com/threads/large-par-46-56-64-lamps.45336/

Never say never about nothin'.
.
 
From http://www.etcconnect.com/About/News/25-Years-of-the-ETC-Source-Four-Fixture.aspx :
Although the page is not dated, since it's celebrating the 25th anniversary of a product launched in 1992, my Scooby detective skills tell me it's as of 2017.

BUT, and it's a big butt, there HAS to be more than four million PAR64 cans/fixtures out there, and those lamps, well...
https://www.controlbooth.com/threads/large-par-46-56-64-lamps.45336/

Never say never about nothin'.
.
It's exactly the sealed beam lamp issue that was the coffin nail for me. We just scrapped 240 cans of the 360 fixture PAR rigs we had, kept half the 6-bars and are mounting LED fixtures on them. The PRT is needed for span length, but we need only to half load the truss. That leaves room for some other toys... :D

But we scrapped the rig because we had ZERO requests for it in the last 3 years and now that lamps are single-sourced, seeing the HPL in the rear view mirrow will not surprise me, it's only a question of when. Like that rack of 6kW dimmers I mentioned up thread - yeah, I remember when we lit big ballrooms or building exteriors for corpy gigs, but that's mostly going to IP-rated LED fixtures outdoors and the planners like being able to make color changes without lifts and ladders. The old dimmers will be the next things out of our shop.

I'm as nostalgic as the rest of you, and while younger than Ron H I too was trained on some really ancient luminaries with a Rosco GEL swatch book (the Roscolene and Roscolar was more money than students could afford) in my pocket. I learned to light for photography with tungsten, vacuum and glass. I learned photography with silver emulsions and chemistry stuff, too. Now I doubt you can buy real gel, lights are now solid state and photography as I experienced it mostly no longer exists. Stuff changes. We don't have to like it but we do need a plan to deal with those changes.
 
It's exactly the sealed beam lamp issue that was the coffin nail for me. We just scrapped 240 cans of the 360 fixture PAR rigs we had, kept half the 6-bars and are mounting LED fixtures on them. The PRT is needed for span length, but we need only to half load the truss. That leaves room for some other toys... :D

But we scrapped the rig because we had ZERO requests for it in the last 3 years and now that lamps are single-sourced, seeing the HPL in the rear view mirrow will not surprise me, it's only a question of when. Like that rack of 6kW dimmers I mentioned up thread - yeah, I remember when we lit big ballrooms or building exteriors for corpy gigs, but that's mostly going to IP-rated LED fixtures outdoors and the planners like being able to make color changes without lifts and ladders. The old dimmers will be the next things out of our shop.

I'm as nostalgic as the rest of you, and while younger than Ron H I too was trained on some really ancient luminaries with a Rosco GEL swatch book (the Roscolene and Roscolar was more money than students could afford) in my pocket. I learned to light for photography with tungsten, vacuum and glass. I learned photography with silver emulsions and chemistry stuff, too. Now I doubt you can buy real gel, lights are now solid state and photography as I experienced it mostly no longer exists. Stuff changes. We don't have to like it but we do need a plan to deal with those changes.
@TimMc Ah g'wan; a Yammie PM2K equipped with a full load of REAL line level input and output transformers was the last truly great console offered for sale; with the possible exception of a few of the custom built McCurdy's, Ward Beck's and Paragon's. Those 'welter weight' PM3K's had NOTHING on their fathers.
Know when you're being ragged.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Several things to point out here:

1) The critical factor here is good LED fixtures are far too expensive for most places to afford to just outright replace their inventory tomorrow. It would cost somewhere around $250,000 for me to replace everything with LED when you include the needed upgrades to non-dim power, a new light board, a lot more DMX universes and data distribution. Theater's just don't have that much money. Instead we are slowly adding them in a little at a time. LED Cyc Lights. LED side lights, LED Down Lights, Then go with the ETC "Layers of Light" approach and pair one LED fixture with each area of incandescent light. It's going to change, but it's very slow. The change from hand drafting to CAD was something that cost what a thousand bucks? LED's are far more expensive and will therefore take a lot longer to do.

2) There are a LOT of theaters out there who upgrade their gear based on the change they find in the seats. These are the kinds of places most young technicians start working at. So 5 or 10 years from now the big boys will have ton's of LED fixtures, but the places you need to work at to begin your career will still be trying to keep their color scrollers going a few more years. If colleges aren't teaching incandescent lighting design, it's going to be really hard to get work fresh out of college.

3) There were several comments that make it sound like the lighting manufacturers are pushing everyone to go LED. While they know we all want LED, I'm quite sure ETC is perfectly happy to continue to sell us a couple more million Source Fours in the years to come. It's energy regulations and our own desires to just have the coolest new toys that are pushing the change. The death of the PAR lamp is mostly about a lack of demand for them. PARS were the first thing to be flat our replaced for reasons I will go point out below, but Source Four Ellipsoidals will take a MUCH longer time to go away. How many of you have a few old non-axial Altman 360Q's made in the 70's or 80's still kicking around in your inventory? It's going to be the same way for all those S4's.

4) Why were PAR's the first thing to go? Because PAR LED's are the cheapest and easiest upgrade to do. You can get a pretty decent LED PAR for what $300. LED Ellipsoidals are 4 times that in price. Plus the optics are critical on an Elipsoidal. Any old LED ellipsoidal will not due. But a PAR's have always been about dumping a lot of color on stage cheap. $300 LED PAR is going to be okay, if you can get your budget up around $500 you are going to get a really good one. Finally PAR's were always done with lots of fixtures in banks of repeating colors so you could get just the right mix of RGB... One LED PAR replaces three or more Incandescents in a rig, so they are easier to transport and cheaper on the load of the whole show. It's the most logical replacement to do.
 
Gafftaper - two counterpoints to consider.

I believe that much - the majority - of new lighting equipment sold is to new schools, not existing schools and other. As I have noted on numerous occasions, in new build, now it's a wash in cost between all LED and all incandescent, with LED becoming less expensive soon.

To your drafting analogy, you compare one seat to a whole theatre, and in 1982, when I went cad, it was more like $5000/seat - $10,000 for 2 of us in an office - $1500/liscense, $2500/desktop, $2000 for a plotter.

There are not many theatres - that do much theatre - that don't get major work in 25 - 30 years - so a generation - and it's begun.
 
I disagree that a new lighting installation is a wash between LED and incandescent. A standard Source 4 incandescent fixture runs around $400. A 4WRD retrofit kit alone is $600 (or $1000 with a full fixture). The difference between 50 Source 4 incadescent fixtures vs 50 Source 4 LED fixtures is 250%. That goes up another 250% if you go with the LUSTR2 series.

If lighting companies are outfitting new theatre/school installations with 100% LED wash fixtures, they are doing a great disservice to those spaces in terms of design and control
 
Darin, the cost comparison needs to include more than the fixture cost. The installation cost for the infrastructure to dim an incandescent fixture including beefier electrical service, bigger HVAC, dimmer rack, wiring, etc.) along with the operating expense (lamps, labour, service intervals, etc.) brings the total cost of ownership at least to par.

It's better these days to wire up a theatre with a lot of switched power and data and use portable dimming when and where it is needed.
 
I didn't assume that the argument was about a ground-up new space vs. fitting an existing space with new fixtures. That said, the % of brand new school/theatre installations vs. the number of existing spaces using incadescent fixtures is very small
 
If lighting companies are outfitting new theatre/school installations with 100% LED wash fixtures, they are doing a great disservice to those spaces in terms of design and control

Yeah, that ship has sailed on new construction projects.

As @sk8rsdad pointed out, lots of other costs to consider in terms of electrical wiring, conduit, panelboards, emergency transfer switches, dimmers, multicable, etc. Sure, it can be more expensive if you go with Series 2 everywhere all the time, but for schools they can get by with Colorsource Spots/PARS just fine at a lower price point. The Chauvet Pro stuff of the same caliber and cheaper yet.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back