Black Light Help

[clintnovak]

Hey guys,

I am new here and hope you guys can help me out. I am part owner of a DJ/Production company in Fredericksburg, VA. We typicly have around 14 bar gigs a week, and 2 MMA cage fights we do lights, video and sound for per month.

We just got two American DJ UV Canon's and they are not really putting out the kind of wide spread light we were hoping. Its a 400 watt bulb, but we are not filling our dance floors. All together they cost us $500 and we are going to return them, but would still like to find something that is not to expensive that would put out a good amount of UV light.

Any seggestions?

 

[ship]

Get what you pay for at times. Wildfire and Altman have some good stuff as with others. Got these old TMB PAR 64 like cannons at work I need to finish reinforcing that work well but were not very well designed for touring by way of support of the ballast or other details. Once reinforced.. sure good fixtures as possibly the same if not an output problem. Beam spread... don't know what to do about that other than longer throw distance asuming wider lens and frost gel won't help.

Avoid the Altman UV-150 for now... Ushio stopped making the lamp - which was news to Altman in Altman still making the fixture. They still have a good stock of lamps, but you cannot get them after market and I think now that everyone is home from LDI, there might be a meeting or two on the subject at Altman for a TBA result on the fixture or alternate supplier for the lamp. At this point, there is no alternate to the lamp for the fixture. Easy enough to get another supplier or restart the factory for them, but such fixtures might find lamps rare in the coming months until this problem is figured out. (Stumbled onto this problem by accident for a client.) I'm told I will be informed of the end solution given an interest in this problem. Will update as I find out.

 

[shiben]

The Elation UV washes are actually pretty well regarded. The real question is how large are your dance floors? You might need 4 units to fill them. Yeah, one Wildfire will do the job, but its also going to be a hugely expensive unit. My guess is you just need to get more of the units out there. 4 of these will go a bit over what you spent on the others, but should be fairly bright and for a dance foor, pretty sufficiant.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

I've also read good things about the Chauvet LED Shadow. The great thing about UV LEDs is that they are DMX controllable.

 

[ToddH]

Omnisistem UV lights are very cost effective and put out a lot of light. They lack the expensive filters on the Altman and Wildfire units that block the undesired wavelengths, but for DJ club lighting they work really well.

 

[sk8rsdad]

I've also read good things about the Chauvet LED Shadow. The great thing about UV LEDs is that they are DMX controllable.

The bad thing about UV LEDS, at least the ones I have seen in operation, is they put out a lot of light in the visible spectrum, which is probably OK for a dance floor but not so good for black light puppetry.

 

[headcrab]

I have one such UV LED. Its output is slightly better than simulating blacklight with R382: It works, but there's too much visible light. These inexpensive UV LEDs emit at 405-410nm, which is not short enough to be invisible.

 

[shiben]

I have one such UV LED. Its output is slightly better than simulating blacklight with R382: It works, but there's too much visible light. These inexpensive UV LEDs emit at 405-410nm, which is not short enough to be invisible.

I guess it comes down to, on the dance floor, do you want to have 0 light and white stuff glowing only, or do you want to have a bit of the purple light? Most of my experience at clubs says that doing true UV is not high enough on the priority list to do Wildfire units.

 

[Kelite]

Avoid the Altman UV-150 for now... Ushio stopped making the lamp - which was news to Altman in Altman still making the fixture.

From what I've understood, the ALtman UV lamps are medical grade and emit a tremendous amount of the UV wavelength. The light produced is hazardous enough in the UV range of the spectrum to require several safety devices designed to power down the fixture if said fixture is opened. The

The 410nm-ish output is preferable for the lighting effects market, but I'm thinking the lamp was first produced to serve the medical industry.