nickklight
Member
Having done a lot of corprate designs with LED's over the past year and recentally started using them in my theatre designs here is what I have found out in lighting cycs and walls with LED's.
1. They can be really nice, offer great saturate color, and can solve power problems.
2. You really get what you pay for. While the pictures of the cheap ($100-$400) LED units may look nice, you will see the difference in dimming and matching colors from unit to unit. Also watch for units that rainbow(where the RGB doesn't overlap correctly) on the edges, this is usually due to cheap or poorly designed optics.
3. No matter how close you space them (short of all units touching each other), any PAR style LED Unit will not evenly light a cyc. It is best to find a unit meant to wash a flat surface.
4.For some reason (I am guessing it is due to the lensing and multiple sources but maybe somone can explain it to me) frost does little but cut down the output of most LED's I have worked with.
My personal favorite LED wash is the Martin Stagebar. The color, brightness and dimming totally blew me away. It is not a cheap fixture, runs in the $1600-$1800 range and I typically use 16-20 units to light a 40' cyc.
To echo what has been said above, a good old cyc light is still the cheapest and easiest way to light a cyc. Really do some research into a LED fixture before you buy (everything from brightness and beam size to LED lot uniformity). Finally nothing beats a live demo if you can go somwhere to see one or get someone to bring one to you.
Hope this helps, good luck
Nick
1. They can be really nice, offer great saturate color, and can solve power problems.
2. You really get what you pay for. While the pictures of the cheap ($100-$400) LED units may look nice, you will see the difference in dimming and matching colors from unit to unit. Also watch for units that rainbow(where the RGB doesn't overlap correctly) on the edges, this is usually due to cheap or poorly designed optics.
3. No matter how close you space them (short of all units touching each other), any PAR style LED Unit will not evenly light a cyc. It is best to find a unit meant to wash a flat surface.
4.For some reason (I am guessing it is due to the lensing and multiple sources but maybe somone can explain it to me) frost does little but cut down the output of most LED's I have worked with.
My personal favorite LED wash is the Martin Stagebar. The color, brightness and dimming totally blew me away. It is not a cheap fixture, runs in the $1600-$1800 range and I typically use 16-20 units to light a 40' cyc.
To echo what has been said above, a good old cyc light is still the cheapest and easiest way to light a cyc. Really do some research into a LED fixture before you buy (everything from brightness and beam size to LED lot uniformity). Finally nothing beats a live demo if you can go somwhere to see one or get someone to bring one to you.
Hope this helps, good luck
Nick
