Abandon teaching incandescent ?
- Thread starterSteveB
- Start date
I think we're getting back into the weeds again.
Technologies are changing (whether they are advancing depends on ones place in the chain and any Luddite tendencies) and if YOU are a teacher, instructor or professor you need to know how you're gonna be teaching the new stuff.
There is a vast, physics-based reason filtered tungsten light looks different from the colors created by LEDs. If you can't grok that reason and figure out how to teach COLORATION because of that difference, as an educator you are failing in your profession.
A designer's job is to make pretty pictures (pretty being a relative term). If a designer can't do that with the tools available to him/her/them, so be it. The designer will have a limited client base and will be replaced, eventually, by someone who can do the work needed.
There seems to be a huge disconnect between reality and nostalgia. In my shop the boss kind of assumed that there would continue to be a place for analogue audio consoles - and he was right if you're looking at 16 inputs or less - but the market for large frame analogue desks is almost zip, zero, nada. I think I saw my last Cadac J about 3 years ago and the show's mixerperson told me the original sound designer was reworking the design for a more compact digital console. On the music concert tours I see an analogue desk about once a year. The rest are mostly Midas, Avid, Yamaha, and DigiCo binary number machines.
So tell me again about those manual weaving looms, buggy whips and PM4000s.
Technologies are changing (whether they are advancing depends on ones place in the chain and any Luddite tendencies) and if YOU are a teacher, instructor or professor you need to know how you're gonna be teaching the new stuff.
There is a vast, physics-based reason filtered tungsten light looks different from the colors created by LEDs. If you can't grok that reason and figure out how to teach COLORATION because of that difference, as an educator you are failing in your profession.
A designer's job is to make pretty pictures (pretty being a relative term). If a designer can't do that with the tools available to him/her/them, so be it. The designer will have a limited client base and will be replaced, eventually, by someone who can do the work needed.
There seems to be a huge disconnect between reality and nostalgia. In my shop the boss kind of assumed that there would continue to be a place for analogue audio consoles - and he was right if you're looking at 16 inputs or less - but the market for large frame analogue desks is almost zip, zero, nada. I think I saw my last Cadac J about 3 years ago and the show's mixerperson told me the original sound designer was reworking the design for a more compact digital console. On the music concert tours I see an analogue desk about once a year. The rest are mostly Midas, Avid, Yamaha, and DigiCo binary number machines.
So tell me again about those manual weaving looms, buggy whips and PM4000s.
Colorsource Spots are ellipsoidals. They're just RGBL instead of X7. Of course, that's part of the reason this topic is so foggy. Prior to LED's we were pampered by 20-30 years of using basically the same handful of lights. Now the model numbers change every couple years and many fixtures get released in several versions. All the turnover makes it hard to keep everything speaking the same language.
Darin
Well-Known Member
ColorSource Spots are 400% more expensive than incadescent fixtures. Unless you can convince me that each incandescent fixture ($400/each) requires an additonal $1200 of infrastructure (dimming, etc.), then the prices are not yet comparable
It's not that hard to make up the difference. At a FOH catwalk for a rep plot if you would've ordinarily had 40 fixtures in pairs of warm and cool, now you can do that with 20 that can mix the full spectrum. To be conservative, let's call it 28 so you have a little more overlap as LED's in white aren't as bright as tungsten lamps. All those wash fixtures over the stage where you would've had 3 rows of down wash zones, 5 across, warm/cool each or maybe even warm/warmer/cool, now you can do with 7 zones across, a single LED wash fixture per zone. That takes 30-45 fixtures and reduces them down to 21.
The average 750-seat theater used to have a 800/3ph feeder with sizable transformer, split out into (3) 96-circuit Sensor racks, approximately 2 for stage lights and the third for house/lobby lighting. In house lighting LED retrofits, I've seen that entire third rack get knocked down to 5-6 circuits. The rest of the D20's might as well be air filter modules.
Overall, what used to 3 racks can be handled with a single 48-circuit relay panel, maybe 200A/3ph depending on the application, can handle both the house and stage lighting. All those custom connector strips with 2-3 multiconductor cables feeding them turn into a single multicable and a couple DMX/CAT6 drops.
I don't have time to do all the math today on the actual tally of costs, but the savings are there in new construction projects.
The average 750-seat theater used to have a 800/3ph feeder with sizable transformer, split out into (3) 96-circuit Sensor racks, approximately 2 for stage lights and the third for house/lobby lighting. In house lighting LED retrofits, I've seen that entire third rack get knocked down to 5-6 circuits. The rest of the D20's might as well be air filter modules.
Overall, what used to 3 racks can be handled with a single 48-circuit relay panel, maybe 200A/3ph depending on the application, can handle both the house and stage lighting. All those custom connector strips with 2-3 multiconductor cables feeding them turn into a single multicable and a couple DMX/CAT6 drops.
I don't have time to do all the math today on the actual tally of costs, but the savings are there in new construction projects.
Darin
Well-Known Member
Again, that only applies to brand new buildings, which accounts for a very small % of lighting installs. For the vast majority of theatres and schools, all of that infrastructure is a sunk cost, and what they face instead is having to replace an inventory of incadescents with fixtures that cost over 4x more (and the incandescents work just fine, only now [theoretically] lamps are no longer available for them). Yes, you're right, the replacement doesn't have to be 1-to-1, as one fixture will do the job of several, but it is still a cost that most not-for-profits simply can't afford
I think you missed a couple of key sentences on the last page in the beginning of this side discussion.
In general I think you are agreeing with Bill and Mike you just are coming at that point from very different directions. They are in the business of designing and outfitting new theaters so they see the big money spent every day. You on the other hand clearly work in the trenches where everyone dreams of being able to get LED Cyc lights. Upgrades are slow and expensive.
BillConnerFASTC
Well-Known Member
As noted, in new build LED is same coat or less than incandescent, and I suspect the majority of lighting sales is LED to new build projects. You only have to look at the near unavailability of new incandescents to get that. The cost of labor and infrastructure for incandescent is 3 to 4 times that of LED. I've been averaging 6 or more new builds a year for several years and am certain. And if in each of those is 75-100 fixtures more or less. How many are existing schools buying? Maybe 1 of every 10 schools buys a dozen fixtures?
And it's safer.
Sorry, I posted this before seeing many more posts on next page. But yes, the infrastructure for incandescent is several times the cost of the fixtures, so quite easy to see LED is less expensive in new build.
BillConnerFASTC
Well-Known Member
I don't know what you mean
High schools or rather the construction there of are the biggest buyers of entertainment lighting. They end to replace their buildings every 50-75 years with one or maybe two major renovations during the life if the building. The funding are bonds with very little between bond cycles. 35,000 to 40,000 high schools in US, add in maybe another 4000 colleges. Professional, road, churches, theme parks, and sound stages maybe all together 1000. Those several hundred new schools each year are the bread and butter of entertainment technology sales. Just facts. Not addressing anything. Not saying right or wrong.
. I was simply stating that in new build LED makes sense. As I have stated before changing over makes no economic sense. Just having feeders, dimmer space, HVAC, and many branch circuits in place tips it way over to incandescent.
High schools or rather the construction there of are the biggest buyers of entertainment lighting. They end to replace their buildings every 50-75 years with one or maybe two major renovations during the life if the building. The funding are bonds with very little between bond cycles. 35,000 to 40,000 high schools in US, add in maybe another 4000 colleges. Professional, road, churches, theme parks, and sound stages maybe all together 1000. Those several hundred new schools each year are the bread and butter of entertainment technology sales. Just facts. Not addressing anything. Not saying right or wrong.
I think one of the driving forces to an all LED rig might end up being the marginally funded performance spaces whose lighting infrastructure is always minimally able to support a large’ish incandescent system.
These are the spaces where the LD’s are getting as many LED’s as possible if only as there’s just insufficient power to bring in the incandescent gear needed for the design. With many spaces renting, the LD’s are screaming to go partial or high content LED. If nothing else it allows greater creativity in color choices from a smaller rig, that In turn makes the design process easier.
These are the spaces where the LD’s are getting as many LED’s as possible if only as there’s just insufficient power to bring in the incandescent gear needed for the design. With many spaces renting, the LD’s are screaming to go partial or high content LED. If nothing else it allows greater creativity in color choices from a smaller rig, that In turn makes the design process easier.
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BillConnerFASTC
Well-Known Member
Good point Steve. Stated from a different view, one of the pluses of LED in new build is that you get most of what you pay for. Design a $300,000 incandescent system and only buy 2/3 initially, the infrastructure will over whelmed the inventory so you end up with maybe a third of the fixtures. With LED, infrastructure is proportionally much smaller so you end up much closer to 2/3 of the actually lighting.
macsound
Well-Known Member
Thought I'd revive this thread because I just got back from Disneyland. Throughout the park along the parade route, there are light towers that previously had 8 Pars, 4 in alternating warm-cool and 4 with scrollers.
During a parade, they were commonly lit and colors chosen based on theme. So usually just a general wash of color. If there was a point in the parade that felt cooler, maybe warm lights would dim and scrollers change color.
See the lights here
Now, many locations are being replaced with LEDs but those areas are directly next to towers that are still incandescent and the difference is terrible. In my mind, an exact result of someone who doesn't understand how LEDs make color. They probably looked at the spec of the old lights, saw it was R04 and plopped it in the Ion. But looking at people walk through the light, it's not the same.
Thought I had a photo of someone walking between the two but now of course, I can't find it.
During a parade, they were commonly lit and colors chosen based on theme. So usually just a general wash of color. If there was a point in the parade that felt cooler, maybe warm lights would dim and scrollers change color.
See the lights here
Now, many locations are being replaced with LEDs but those areas are directly next to towers that are still incandescent and the difference is terrible. In my mind, an exact result of someone who doesn't understand how LEDs make color. They probably looked at the spec of the old lights, saw it was R04 and plopped it in the Ion. But looking at people walk through the light, it's not the same.
Thought I had a photo of someone walking between the two but now of course, I can't find it.
tjrobb
Well-Known Member
Coming out of the weeds here, but safety played a part in our house light LED upgrade. Our theatre was built in 1928. To relamp certain house fixtures you had to walk on the 2" thick steel-and-concrete-plaster ceiling, pull the can out of the ceiling (don't ask), change the lamp, then walk back across the ceiling. Of course, one fixture required a trip down a 6' ancient hand-made ladder (possibly original to the building), with the ladder and fixture adjacent to a 40' high void space... they'd never find your body.
Needless to say, once we found a PAR that could throw well and dim properly we were eager to upgrade.
Now back to your thread.
Needless to say, once we found a PAR that could throw well and dim properly we were eager to upgrade.
Now back to your thread.
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