Control/Dimming LED colors

cbmac

Member
Hi All,

We have some PAR64 LED cans and the lighting designers usually make comments about how it's impossible to mix an amber or white or any number of other colors.

Is there any LED lighting at this point that can really do justice for those who have used gels for years?

Regards,
Mac
 
No, not really, LED is a very new technology which isn't fully developed yet.

There are a few higher end devices which are VERY good (Color Kinetics comes to mind) but they are very expensive. It's very difficult to make white and amber out of LED Devices and some devices have a 4th set of Amber or White LEDs to compensate for this.
 
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It's very difficult to make white and amber out of LED Devices and some devices have a 4th set of Amber or White LEDs to compensate for this.

Pixel Par has this and I've been very impressed by their lights. They don't sport the White LED but do have the Amber which is a nice shade. I've added a little hit of Blue to help soften it and had a decent warm light.
 
I've talked about them way too much around here. But Selador has a very impressive range of white in a variety of color temperatures. They also can maintain a color all the way through a fade better than most products. They also cost around $1500 per foot last I heard. I wish I could afford them.

OHHH WOW. Selador has a new product not on display at LDI! The have upgraded their LED's to 3.5 Watt Luxeon Rebels. That's 40, 3.5 Watt LED's per 11 inches of strip light. Those suckers are bright and way better color than stanard RGB.

Now prepare for a snide remark from Derek about my unhealthy man love of Selador products.
 
In theory you can mix RGB to any color you want. But theory is not always reality (and at this time it really isn't). Also the color range of each individual color LED is not it's whole color spectrum, further limiting the range of colors you can make with RGB mixing. To compensate for this many manufacturers have been adding Amber and White LED's into there fixtures. Often times there's a base line fixture that is RGB and a better one (or two) thats RGB with the addition of amber (RGBA) or RGB with amber and white (RGBAW). You could imagine an RGBW fixture but I haven't seen one.

So unfortunately the best way to mix to the colors your LDs want is to spend more money. What I would do is when you mix to an amber or whiteish color that you particular like, save it, either in the board or write down the values, and then you can use that as a starting point for the next time you want a similar color.
 

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