I spent the last year thinking about this for my
theatre, and just got the funding to go ahead. I considered the Colorado 144 and the Chroma-Q,
Selador classic, and Elation but in the end I decided to light our
cyclorama with 16
Selador D40 Vivids, which may seem like a strange choice to many. At this
point, it is still a gamble since the order is being placed next week. Here's why I made the decision I made.
The
venue is a 350 seat
auditorium, used primarily by an all-volunteer
community theatre group to perform mostly
stage plays, with small-scale musicals at Christmas and in the early summer. We also rent to a number of local dance schools. The rest of the use is the odd
one-off rental. There is a rehearsal room/black box studio adjacent to the
auditorium. Lighting gear is
portable between the 2 spaces. The
cyclorama might get used for about half of those shows. Some of the time it gets used like a wall of colour. Other times it is used to
build naturalistic skies, seen through windows on box sets, and stuff like that. Our
cyclorama is 24'x40' with the most convenient lighting
batten located 4' from the
face. There is 6" between the
cyclorama and the back wall so back lighting is not feasible. I provide this background because it is important to understand how the space is used, and how the
cyclorama is likely to be used.
The D40s initially seemed like a really expensive option. Then I started doing the math. A D40 costs more per
cell (I define a
cell as an individually controllable segment) than any of the other options, especially when you add in lensing, cabling, and hardware. Part of the challenge for me was figuring out how to compare units, so I spent time determining at $/
lux using MAP pricing at a distance of 5 meters (15') for all of the units, just to be sure I was dealing with something approximating an apples-to-apples comparison for
intensity. It turns out that the range is $0.23 to $.28 for all the units that I compared. In other words, the cost for
intensity is pretty much constant. The Chroma-Q's win in this
category. The D40s lose. Surprisingly, the
Selador classics compare quite favourably.
Then I looked at the dimming curves and dimming technology. Others in this thread have discussed the
steppiness at low intensities with some fixtures. The unmentioned consequence of a bad dimming curve is poor colour mixing in the intermediate ranges. We have some Blizzard Pucks, which are at the bottom end of the
LED technology price range. They are good value for what they are, but it is not possible to get good intermediate colour mixing out of them. They look nice with the 6 primary+secondary colours, except for yellow. Everything else is a crap shoot. All the units I considered were at least RGBA. All should use
PWM technologies at high frequencies, to avoid flicker on video cameras.
If you are happy with a
monochromatic cyclorama then all the units work well. If you want 2 or 3 horizon lines then you need to start doubling up units. The ColoRADO 144, being 2 ColoRADO 72s in a common housing with independent lensing of the 2 arrays, ought to be capable of independent control of the top and bottom cells, but it isn't. If anybody from Chauvet is following this forum, consider this a feature request. For total cost, the D40s with a mix of lenses wins.
Flexibility is important to me. If I were a rental shop, or putting together a package for a tour then I would opt for one of the linear
array units. As a
stock unit in a
venue, there is value in being able to use the fixtures in multiple roles. Lower a
batten and
swing a
fixture around, swap lenses as necessary and the
cyclorama lights are a back light. Pull them down and put them on floor as a
ground row. Move them
downstage and use them as a strip light behind a
scrim. Separate them and use them as side lighting or to
wash walls of a set. Most of the
LED strips can do this with varying degrees of success. Behaving more like a
PAR, with lensing to behave like a flood, the D40 wins.
Noise also matters. A convection-cooled
unit is better than a fan-cooled
unit in our space. For a
cyclorama, fans don't matter too much since the units are far upstage and tucked behind a lot of noise-absorbing fabric. If used in another location, the noise might matter. Unfortunately, there is no industry-standard comparison of noise so it is difficult to compare units on this basis. The D40s, being convection-cooled, are guaranteed to be silent.
I plan to get at least a decade of use out of these units in their primary
role, and expect them to last for much longer than that. Any of the units pay for themselves in that time on electricity savings. For me, this is part of a larger
purchase that is replacing our top, side, and
scroller systems.
